


pennies & stars, dragons & stags

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up, Modern Era, Pregnancy, Public Display of Affection, Public Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Sex, Unplanned Pregnancy, Vaginal Fingering, miscellaneous
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2020-11-08 12:57:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 43
Words: 21,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20835845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: a collection of wee fics.updates when i am feeling especially sad and/or clever.





	1. I: college au

**Author's Note:**

> the series title refers, of course, to the different denominations of coin in Westeros. 
> 
> seven pennies = one star  
eight stars = one stag  
two hundred ten stags = one dragon
> 
> see? totally simple.

Brienne is a virgin, it is entirely obvious: one, that she looks annoyed when he jokes about sex — it _has_ to be virginity, because his jokes are very funny.

Two — that she blushes when he makes an innuendo.

Three — that he’s been trying to sleep with her for years now, doing everything but literally asking her to fuck him — and like a talented surfer, she has steadfastedly maintained a vertical position.

Jaime, a shark, circles in the water and bides his time.

Okay, well, he hasn’t exactly been chaste meanwhile. He goes around with Cersei most weekends; she’s queen of the school in her own mind and even Jaime admits she is beautiful, and intelligent, and while she’s not exactly a _good_ lay they have something between them that makes it ridiculously hot.

The other students say they’re related. _They have the same eyes, _he’s heard, and _Even their laughs sound the same._ It’s all stupid rumors. He admits they look similar — but so what? How many human variations are there, really? Take two white kids from a similar socio-cultural background —

“Does that mean ‘we’re both rich?’” says Brienne, irritably.

“There are certain advantages to having good dental care as a child.”

She hits him with her textbook. “They aren’t gossiping because you both had braces before you hit middle school, you goon. They think you’re siblings because your nose and your hair and your eyes look the same.”

Jaime shrugs. “Surgery. Hair dye. Contacts.”

“You don’t wear contacts, you don’t color your hair, and you’ve never had a nose job.”

“Not _me_, wench. _Cersei_.”

“Oh, you are such a liar.” She’s smiling, her eyes closed.

Jaime wants to kiss her so much his mouth aches — as does a part lower on. “Speaking of the devil, she and I have a date tonight.”

“Mm. Another hair-dye party?”

“This time we’re doing the pubes,” he says.

Brienne looks blandly surprised. “I always took her as more of a Brazillian girl.”

“She is,” says Jaime. “This one is for me.” — and he waits for the inevitable slow burn of blush to crawl up her face.

If he can’t make her come, at least he can make her hot.


	2. II: growing up on Tarth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime is sent to Tarth, to grow up under the watchful eye of Lord Selwyn ... where he befriends (if that’s the word) a certain noblelady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 28 July 2019.

Seventeen steps down. One door and another and turn. Trace the right wall to the window — yes, there was the opening and the thin iron lattice and cold against her fingers — and then a _something_ she couldn’t see in the dark, an airing cupboard maybe, she barked her toes and bit her tongue and walked the last few steps and carefully knocked the tricky little pattern he’d taught her.

He pulled her inside and shut the door and pushed her against it in what felt like one motion, and then his hands were on her. _Jaime_.

A moment to catch her breath (had she been holding it all the way through the walk?) and then she wriggled free. “I’m tired of all these dark corners. I brought you a candle. Light it.”

He gave her a dark look and obeyed.

It took a moment — Jaime was never good with flint and steel. He preferred a greatsword, he said, to a pretty little _knife_.

The short work dagger she wore was a gift from her father. She bristled. _It’s not the size of the blade. It’s how you use it._

_Says the one who has no sword at all_, laughing rudely.

She’d pushed him to the ground and got his fine clothes caked with mud, which was very satisfying for a few seconds, while he wiped off his eyes. Then his foot caught her and she was in the mud too and ...

They were only children back then. It didn’t matter.

The wick sputtered and caught. He put it on the hard-backed chair and turned to her.

“Strip,” she said.

And Jaime smiled.


	3. III: after the clearing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the grey morning they do it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 06 october 2019.

In the grey morning they do it again: his hands slide up beneath her tunic and tug it over her head, kissing places he’d not even looked for the night before — the relief of finding him had been too strong, she’d all but begged him to come into her bed.

_Now? _he’d said. _Here? Brienne, you haven’t thought this through._

_I have. _The inn was small, the roof leaked, the mattress was lumpy with matted straw. 

But it was dark; the night was moonless, the stars were out. He couldn’t see her in the dark.

Now his fingers splayed against her hip and ran over the bruises there. His mouth pressed against the ropemarks on her neck, hemp burnt into her skin.

Her hands were shaking.

She pulled his face up to kiss. Yes, Jaime. Yes.

When had she dropped the _ser_ from his name? Not in the forests near Riverrun; not the baths of Harrenhal. Not at horrible Maidenpool and not the bear pit and not Kings Landing, waiting in a cell for him to remember her.

_Jaime_ she’d said in the clearing, knowing he wasn’t nearby to hear. And _Don’t hurt Podrick._

Podrick is dead and Gendry is dead — isn’t he? — and Arya and Sansa are gone too.

But Jaime is here.

Asleep again as the sun rises further, his hair grown long and curling in silver and gold. His lips are parted and he’s almost smiling, breathing heavy and slow.

Brienne dresses easily, no problem today with aching bones, and it isn’t until she has a moment to see herself in a reflecting-glass that she understands why: her cuts and bruises and the long thin burn on her throat are gone overnight, leaving unmarked skin every place that he touched.


	4. IV: second shift at the diner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne, stuck in her hometown, is working odd shifts at the Evenstar diner.
> 
> She has no interest in her one-time highschool hookup. 
> 
> She definitely doesn’t care at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 07 September 2019.
> 
> I was supposed to be watching Toy Story 4.

The diner was busy and her head was ringing and her feet hurt, and it wasn’t until Pia said “Did you even _see_ the guy at table three?” that Brienne looked up from her order pad and paid attention.

Blonde hair and broad shoulders was all she could see from this angle, and that didn’t mean much at all, did it? Likely Pia just had a thing for blondes.

Nevertheless. “You’ve got him?”

“I’d like to.”

“Pia. Focus. Are you off shift or are you taking it? Answer first, innuendo second.”

The other girl shook her head. “Watching my sister’s kids tonight. She’s on at the factory. Otherwise I’d be on that, Brienne. I’d be on it so hard.”

Shit. “Arya?”

“M’lesson’s in fifteen.”

“You tell Gendry to keep it off your face, okay? Nobody wants a waitress with bruises.”

“So I’ll work dishwasher.”

“And let me take your tips? Not a damn chance. Go on. I’ll bus.”

Arya, experiencing a rare fit of gratitude, hit Brienne in the arm and fled. Pia apologized a few times, took over the bussing and register, and promised to work the next Friday when the bikers came in late. That was as self-serving as it was sacrificial; pretty Pia knew on which side her bread was buttered, and how to lay it on thick.

Whatever. If men thought a smile was worth a dragon, who was Brienne to say different?

She stomped over to table three and kept her eyes on her pad. “Drink?”

“Coffee.” He wasn’t looking at her either. Hadn’t even noticed her, or maybe he was ignoring her? Oh thank all the gods individually and by name.

“Got it.”

She was halfway to the warmers when he called her back. “Miss?”

She didn’t respond. Maybe he was talking to someone else.

“Miss Tarth?” Laughter in his tone.

And this time she had to turn back.

She had forethought to bring the caraffe, however, and a mug. “Ready to order?”

Jaime goddamn Lannister looked up at her — long and slow. “There’s a few things I’d like,” he drawled.

“To order.”

“Got any pie?”

“Cherry, blueberry, apple, and peach.”

“A la mode?”

“Will do.”

“Cherry. One slice, two forks. Ice cream on the side.”

“Two — no. No. I’m working.”

“I see that. When do you get off?”

Her face went red. “Stop that.”

“It’s a normal question, Tarth.”

He was not a normal man, however. No one else made her feel like she was going to freeze — and burn — at the same moment. “Nine. But I don’t usually get home til —”

“I can wait.” He sipped his underbrewed, half-burnt, lukewarm coffee like he wasn’t accustomed to far better. “I don’t know about you, but I plan to be up all night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can tell Jaime is a villain because no emotionally healthy person eats cherry pie a la mode. IT IS AGAINST THE RULES OF GODS AND MEN.


	5. V: a surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime is pleased with his virility; Brienne has mixed feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 04 September 2019.

He woke to the sound of his wife crying, and sat up in mild alarm. “Brienne?”

Silence replied.

“I already heard you, wench. No point in hiding. Gods, what hour is it? Did I sleep at all?” The window showed only flat night, and no one else seemed awake.

She didn’t move. “Go back to bed.”

“Come back in my arms, and I will. — Brienne, _please_ stop crying. What is it?”

She rubbed her wrist over her nose. “You’ve ruined my life.”

“Oh, that,” said Jaime. “You finally figured it out, did you? Saw the maester? Counted back on your fingers? Asked around as to why you were decorating the landscape every morning?”

“Shut up. This is your fault. Though I’m not surprised that you find it all very funny. You’re so selfish and ... and awful.”

“I will not listen to you impugning my honor while you’re all the way across the room. Come back to bed. Come on.” And he caught her by the hand and tugged her back between the covers, arranging them so her head was lying on his chest, his hand in her hair. “It’s perfectly normal to be anxious about bearing a child.”

“I’m not anxious. I’m angry.”

Jaime kept stroking through her hair. “What would you like to do?”

She sniffed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m fucked.”

He did not make the obvious joke. “There are ways to stop it.”

“That’s so dangerous.”

“None of this is safe. Brienne — I _am_ sorry.”

She sniffed. “What was it like when — with Cersei?”

He didn’t answer a long moment, staring at their entwined hands. “Strange,” he said at last. “A strange mix of emotions. Pride, and shame. Fear. And later on, guilt. It was my fault they died, in a way.”

“You loved them.” That much had been obvious even as an outsider — or perhaps because she was outside it all. The way he’d looked at Joffrey’s wedding, stretched thin and hurting; the way he smiled at Myrcella, tugging at him to _come see my pony._

She tried to remember Tommen and couldn’t even bring up his memory. He was only a round-faced boy on the edge of things, of no particular significance to anyone but his parents and his cats.

Jaime was talking. “I thought at the time that we were being so clever. So subtle. But Tyrion knew without being told. So did Father, I think. What will you do about this babe?”

“Do? There’s nothing to be done.”

“Of course there is. You could take it out, with teas and needles and things. There’s always a woman who knows the way. Or you could get rid of it later — expose it when it’s born, that’s the safest, or smother it before it cries. Or we could give it to someone in Flea Bottom, if you’d like. But that’s a risk forever. People talk. Even when you pay them to be silent. Even when they don’t think they’re saying anything much at all.”

She pressed her left hand, the one Jaime wasn’t holding, against her stomach. “You’d want to kill it? or give it away?”

“This isn’t my choice,” said her husband.

“It is.”

“It’s not.” But she wanted more, didn’t she? So he said: “I regretted every child at one point. Firstly that they made Cersei cry and scream with the laboring, and then again when they grew older and became real people ... I often looked at Joff and thought he would have been better as a smear on the sheets. And,” he said, “there was another one. Mine. We were only children yet; she wasn’t married and it — we had to get rid of it.” He cleared his throat. “We were thirteen. I stayed with her all night and watched it pass out. She was ... three months along? Four? It was only a blobby fishy thing, no bigger than a finger.” He rubbed his thumb over her eyebrow. “We will do whatever you want.”

“I don’t want it,” she whispered. “Not this, not now. Not yet.”

“Then we’ll get rid of it.”

“I don’t want you to hate me.”

“No,” said Jaime. And when she turned her face away he held her head steady, much as he could with one hand. “I wouldn’t. Not ever. ... if you’d been hurt by the Mummers and fell pregnant, would you wonder about right and wrong? This is the same.”

“But it’s yours. And I’m your wife.”

It took him a while to respond. “I’ve made three children, and not one of them was _mine_. Even as tiny babies, they belonged to themselves.” He moved his hand to meet hers, resting over the little stranger. “And so do you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canonically, Brienne has a complex and unsettled relationship to the idea of parenting — as does Jaime.


	6. VI: Tyrion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I knew he loved me,” says Brienne to Tyrion, “because he looks at me how he looks at you.”

The tallest woman he had ever seen came and sat down next to his bedside. She wore clean, serviceable clothes and comfortable boots — but they were men’s clothes, men’s boots. And a sword hung at her waist.

He closed his eyes again. Looking at things hurt. “Good morning, ser.”

“It’s afternoon,” said Brienne.

“Is there a reason I am so honored as to merit a visit? Or is this a condolence call?”

“Neither.”

“You don’t think I deserve pity? You’re a harsh woman.”

“Drinking too much is your own fault, and the consequences are your own to bear.”

Tyrion moaned. “You sound like my father. How is that? He is dead and buried, thank the gods. Are you inhabited by his ghost?” He squinted. “Pray tell me that my brother has not extended his incestuous habits. Sister is one thing; father quite another.”

“He’s worried about you.”

“My father? That seems unlikely for several reasons.”

“_Jaime_,” she said, enuciating, “is worried about you. And he isn’t talking about it. I expected to be grateful for a bit of silence but, as it turns out ...”

“You may put his mind at ease. I am here. Healthy, hearty, and hale.”

“You are angry with him.”

“Do you know what he did?”

“I know that he had a part in your first marriage.”

“He lied to me, he betrayed me, and he considers it nothing. Would you forgive that easily?”

She withheld a sigh. “When I met Jaime, he was an arrogant loudmouth with no real understanding of the world.”

“Call him a Lannister and be done with it.”

She ignored this. “That was ... ten years after your marriage?”

“Something like that. Could you modulate your voice, please?”

She spoke more quietly: but her words were not gentle. “He spent those years listening to Aerys rape Tyesha, and Robert fuck your sister. All those days standing outside a door while women wept and men had pleasure. Do you think it made no impresssion on him?”

“That doesn’t mean —“

“Are you the same man you were at twenty, or five and twenty?”

“No,” grudgingly. “But ...”

Brienne waited.

Tyrion said: “Most mistakes are forgiveable. A misstep, a quick word in anger — fine. Duping me about my wife? Finding a whore and calling her a maid? Those mistakes are choices, ser.”

She said: “When I met Jaime, he loved two people in the world. Your sister and yourself.”

Tyrion opened his mouth.

Brienne said: “He loved both of you — _only_ the two of you — and _you_ were the one he loved without pain for it. Don’t make him suffer for it now.”

“Lady Brienne, with all due — acknowlegement — you are very young. You perhaps don’t understand my brother.”

She stood up to her full height, and placed a hand on her sword; it seemed to reassure her. “He loves you desperately, lord Tyrion. I am telling you because you don’t seem to see it for yourself. So, yes; you know your brother — but not as well as I know my husband.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne shook her head. “I’m not afraid of you.”
> 
> “And yet you run away.”
> 
> “I do not run.”
> 
> “Liar,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 01 October 2019.

He caught her in the dim hallways of Winterfell, then, half-drunk as he so often was these days.

She could have moved away — how much strength did a cripple have? — but his fingers sank into her arm and she would not injure him. She stood quiet.

“You’re avoiding me.”

Of course she was. “Not at all, ser Jaime. I am kept busy here. There is much to do. Training the children for the coming war, and preparations --“

“You’ve been avoiding me for more than that. The Blackfish. Arya Stark. We meet five minutes in a sevenmonth and you look at me like —”

She flushed.

“Yes,” he said. “Like you’re doing now. Like I’m going to drag you off and put your body in my mouth. Eat or be eaten: is that the way of it between us?”

A smile at the corner of his lips meant he was teasing her again, and for a moment she forgot herself, smiling back. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“No,” he said. “It’s yourself that you’re afraid of. Why?”

Because of you. Because of your eyes.

He said: “Tell me truthfully you’ve never thought of it, or wanted it between us. Tell me you aren’t wet.”

She stared at him.

“Between your legs, ser Brienne.”

“I —”

“Let me see it. Let me taste you. Let me,” he licked his mouth, “let me do what you want me to do, I know you think of it in the dark. Should I tell you how I think of you? How I want to just ...” He pressed forward one leg, sliding it between her knees and lifting the thigh up, so she gasped.

“Tell me,” he said.

She couldn’t. The hallway, the noise from  
far off, the impossibility it all. “My septa said I’d never marry someone except for duty, she said ...”

“Marriage,” said Jaime. “You don’t want to be a Lannister. You only want ... gods, Brienne. You really are ready.”

She opened her legs a little, letting him slip another finger into her body. “I thought of this.”

“Good,” murmured. “What else?”

“I pretended ...”

“Yes,” in a rougher voice. “Of course. How long? Since Harrenhal?”

She shook her head. “Kings Landing. Or the siege. You gave me the sword, the armor. You said ...”

“That I’d kept the shape of your body in my mind all that time. Yes.” Faster now; she whimpered with it. “You lay there in the dark with little Podrick and dreamt of me beside you — inside you?”

“No.”

“Liar,” he said: and kissed her, and stepped back just in time.

Sansa peered at them, too near one another in the half-dark. “Ser Brienne? May I have a word?”

“Yes,” said Brienne, and “my lady,” and followed her, aware of Jaime’s grim disappointment, aware too that Sansa would think him the aggressor — when all he’d ever done to Brienne was shake and shame her with the truth.


	8. VIII: love in an elevator

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 15 October 2019.

What she thought about Jaime — when she let herself think about Jaime — je was gentle. He ran his thumbs over her lips and parted them, slipped a hand jnto her underpants while he said kind things like _Take your time_ and _We’ll go as slow as you like. _He let her dominate him — begged for her to crawl on his hips, straddle him and hold him down while he waited, desperate, dripping.

_Please_, he said.

He said that a lot in her fantasies.

When he came into the elevator with her, he was tall and cold and perfect and silent, and Brienne dropped her file folder. Someone — a middle-aged woman in a green dress — bent and got it for her.

“Thank you,” Brienne said, wishing she’d dropped it down the elevator shaft, wishing she’d thrown herself down with it.

The doors opened; the people filed out. Brienne started to follow.

“Not you. You stay. Hit the button for number nine.”

“But—“

He did it himself, prosthetic hand clicking against the metal. And when the doors shut he pulled out the STOP key — turned to her — and smiled. “That’ll buy us ten minutes, maybe more. Any ideas what we could do with the time?”


	9. ix: in love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne is in love, & Jaime is aware.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 06 September 2019.

Brienne is in love.

Jaime has known it for ... quite some time. Since the bear pit, maybe; or at least Kings Landing. The wench caught the tail end of some argument between himself and Cersei, and the look she gave him was pained and grieving and gentle. Kind.

None of these are attributes he associates with Brienne of bloody Tarth. They’re not part of anyone he knows, really. Cersei is fond of sweeping statements like _You win or you die_, and she nearly means it, even when the stakes are another round of _cynasse_. Tyrion grieves in his own way, by emptying wine bottles and filling whores.

And Tywin, well. _Kind_ does not describe his father.

She isn’t much like anyone in his family. She’s ugly, for one — and the Lannisters are all quite attractive, aside from their missing hands and noses and that unfortunate business of his sister’s missing heart. Even idiotic Lancel has the typical pert Lannister mouth, the sharp green eyes, the hair that stays gold far longer than it should.

But gold hair and green eyes aren’t the extent of his ambition, and he finds it out when she visits him — touches him — doesn’t mock him when he’s crying.

And, well.

There is something here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this didn’t go anywhere, much as i wanted it to.   
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	10. x: morning after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jaime wakes, and brienne is gone.
> 
> (the morning after.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 6 September 2019.

He wakes. “Brienne?”

No answer. The bed is cold, the room is — surprisingly warm. Whenever you leave, put on wood for the fire.

So she’s gone.

He stumbles through the ritual of dressing, so much more damn complex now than before he lost his hand, and it’s made worse by the golden monstrosity — so he leaves it be. He has quite enough trouble fitting on his boots, thank you.

He skips the great hall, assuming she is down in the practice yards — and so she is, fighting against no one at all.

He takes a moment to catch his breath (she isn’t gone, she didn’t leave, didn’t flee to Tarth, didn’t fling herself from the tower, she’s alive, alive, _Brienne_) — and to simply admire her.

She is so good at this.

Jaime is not.

He wishes he had stopped by the kitchens, some fruit would make him seem perfectly non-chalant, wouldn’t it? Instead —

“Ser Jaime.”

“Ser Brienne,” he says: and has the absolute pleasure of watching her smile.


	11. xi: roommates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei and Brienne are paired up as roommates by the benevolent grace of a college computer system.
> 
> No actual Cersei content, hah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 26 October 2019.

Brienne expected Cersei to be in class, and so she was; she expected the room to be empty — and it was not. Jaime Lannister was sprawled on the bed, looking all mouth and no sense.

She stopped, then stepped in and carefully shut the door behind her. She didn’t especially want to be in the same room with him, without easy egress — but gods only knew what he would say. “You’re not supposed to be here. Alone.”

“I never agreed to that.”

“It was understood.” She dropped the bag off her shoulder. “Is Cersei coming back soon, or ...”

“Lab day. She’ll be gone for hours.”

Shit.

Jaime sat upright and smiled. “How shall we pass the time?”

“In silence,” said Brienne, “fully clothed, on separate sides of the room.”

He made a face. “Tease.”

“I never agreed to any of this.”

“You didn’t complain, either. And don’t even act as though you were unwilling. You had my shirt up and my trousers down while I was still figuring out how to undo that awful bra of yours.” He squinted at her. “You’re wearing the horrible thing again, aren’t you?”

She held a Psychology book against her chest. “Stop. Stop talking. Just. Stop.”

“Do you really want that?” he said.

And Brienne grit her teeth.

Jaime was well-dressed, well-heeled, and generally rude. He was naturally athletic, intelligent in a quick, sharp way that his face made superfulous, and he kissed her like he’d never wanted anyone else in his life — an obvious lie. She had been in the room while he fucked Cersei, after all.

He had stupid curly hair and stupid green eyes and the sort of natural tan that spoke of summering in the Hamptons, — and it was all over him — except the pale streak on his right ankle.

_What is that? _she’d said, when all that golden glory was in bed with her. _Did someone make you a friendship bracelet?_

Jaime had looked at her a long moment, and kissed her mouth, taking his time about it. When he pulled away again, he must have seen the question still waiting in her face because he said: _Ankle monitor. I was on house arrest all summer._

_Why?_

He didn’t answer.

Brienne had kissed him — tentatively, and then harder — and it was a while of that — and then he was ready again — and then ...

She blushed now just to think of it.

None of this should have been attractive, and it _was_. Why was she interested in his wickedness? What god would be so cruel?

Jaime was watching her. “We don’t have to fuck, if you don’t want to. But Brienne? I want to.”

“If Cersei comes in ...”

“She won’t.” He slid his hand around her waist. “You’re so warm, Tarth.”

He was warm — he felt fevered. Hot to the touch. She touched him more. “I don’t want to listen to you fuck her anymore.”

“Jealous?”

“It’s gross. And you only do it to be a dick.”

“Mm. Is that what you think?”

“That’s what I know — mmm.”

He licked a little further down her neck. “You googled me, didn’t you. And you didn’t find anything.”

“I found everything. Trial transcripts. Police reports. Mug shots.” His hand went inside her body; she made a very hungry noise. “Why don’t you take off my underpants first? This is so inconvenient.”

“Because,” he said, “I like to see you want it. I _like_ you desperate. And don’t bother lying about what you found. If you had seen any of that shit, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

She froze.

“Ahh. _There’s_ the look. How many times have I seen that? Don’t you trust me anymore, Brienne of Tarth?” He used his free hand to try and tug down her jeans. “How quickly the worm turns.”

“Don’t tease me, Jaime. What did you do?”

He was above her — barely half-dressed — beautiful and wanting. “Are you telling me to stop?”

No. She shook her head. But ...

“You trust me or you don’t,” said Jaime. “Make up your mind.”

He smelled sweet and he tasted sweet and Brienne thought, really, that she had no reason at all to believe anything good of him — except how he smiled at her, how he touched her, how he brushed the hair out of her face afterwards and asked if she was alright, exactly as though he cared about the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my college roomate had sex with her boyfriend while i was asleep. alas for all three of us, i didn’t sleep through the whole thing.


	12. a decade later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> notes on a marriage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 21-22 november 2019.

Brienne was in the bath when Jaime came to her.

She was forbidden to go to the executions, barred by tradition and request. It rankled at first — being dismissed again for what was between her legs, rather than her capabilities and strengths — but now, a decade on, she was grateful. She’d never liked to watch killing. And an execution seemed somehow filthy. Drawn-out.

Her husband came in without knocking and sat next to the bath. He was tired; he moved heavily. “It’s snowing,” he said.

“Winter,” said Brienne.

“Another one. A shorter one, maybe.”

“The Starks were right after all,” she said, to make him smile.

He did not. “Are you feeling well?”

“Only my monthlies.”

“Bad again.”

She nodded.

He didn’t say what everyone else said: _Maybe this month, maybe soon, it happens when you stop trying. _He didn’t say what he had said before — that this infertility was punishment for his other children, for Joffrey and ...

_The world doesn’t work like that, _she’d told him, hot._ Don’t you dare think those things._

So he stopped saying them: but she doubted he stopped thinking them.

She couldn’t ask him that.

Brienne hooked her chin on the metal tub. 

He was so beautiful, this man she’d married. Grey had crept through his hair and into his beard; his face was lined from sunlight, tired from old grief. He was settled into it, accustomed to it, as he had accepted the years and the winters and the long-ago loss of his hand. 

Brienne never accepted things. Her worst quality, maybe. The blood between her legs hurt her every month, while Jaime only nodded. He was so much better than she was. 

She raised up and leaned over to kiss him deeply.

He shifted back, not displeased, smiling a little now. “What’s that for?”

“Because I love you,” she said. “Because you’re still here.”


	13. xiii: in the diner (modern au)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the diner, Brienne tears up a napkin into tiny pieces and tells Jaime about Hyle.

In the diner, Brienne tears up a napkin into tiny pieces and tells Jaime about Hyle. “He’s leaving me,” she says. “He’s fucking someone, probably, I don’t know. He lied when I asked. Maybe he isn’t doing it yet, maybe he only wants to do it. I don’t know. Fucking men. Why doesn’t anyone know what they _want_?”

Jaime looks down at the table, at his full mug and her empty one, at their bodies not touching. It’s fall slipping into winter, it’s cold, raining; her arms are layered in sweater and shirt. Her sleeves are pushed up, her hands restless.

His right sleeve is pushed up over the empty wrist; his left hand is still. He says: “I’ve never known what I wanted. Not when it was mine to take. Do _you_ know?”

She says: “I wanted Hyle.”

“Did you?” says Jaime. He’d met her when she was already entangled in that relationship, but even then — still close to the start — it seemed more a box to be checked off. _Find boyfriend; get married._ Done. “When did you stop wanting him?”

She shakes her head. “I thought — when I got the divorce papers in the mail — I thought it was going to be bigger than it was. Five years of my life, gone. But here I am. With you. Drinking the same shitty coffee at the same shitty diner.”

“Is that good? Or bad.”

“It’s nothing,” she says. “It just is.”


	14. xiv: reunion (modern AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> on the grand occasion of his ten-year high-school reunion, a Lannister visits Tarth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 15 December 2019.
> 
> “Kem” is the name of a Baratheon-born sellsword, apparently? so says the internet.

The door was unlocked.

Even on Tarth, that was a bit trusting. She staggered through with the grocery bags, stepping around toys, calling out —

And stopped. 

“We have a visitor,” said her father. 

Brienne didn’t move. “I see that. Um. Is Kem around? I was hoping he could help me with these.”

“He’s outside. Let me get them, Brie. You two can talk.” Selwyn disengaged her hands from the shopping bags and went off with them, into the kitchen.

And then she was trapped, wasn’t she.

“Hello,” said Jaime.

Brienne crossed her arms. “Hi.”

He didn’t smile, which was good. “Who’s Kem?”

She swallowed. “A new little brother. You know how my father ... how he is. With dating. With women. What have you been up to? Why are you here?”

“It’s our school reunion. Don’t you open your mail? Ten years.”

She remembered perfectly well. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“You can dial a phone with one hand, Jaime.”

If she’d hoped the reminder of his disability would shut him up, she was disappointed: he didn’t shift his gaze. “The last time we talked, you called me a idiot rich boy and threw your drink in my face.”

She flushed. “I lost my temper.”

“That isn’t all you lost.”

“Shut up.”

He shifted on his feet. His face was stiff and blank. “I don’t want to upset you. I wanted to talk. And then your father invited me for supper —“

She was going to kill her father.

“And he introduced me to your brother.”

He waited, seeming to feel that needed a response. “Yes?” she said, terse.

“I didn’t realize that people on Tarth had green eyes.”

Brienne didn’t answer.

He rubbed his hand through his hair, looking horribly tired. Broken. “Ten years. Ten _fucking_ years. And you never thought I deserved to know?”

“We had one night. And then you went back to Cersei —“

“It was a little more than one night. Or is that what you’ve been telling yourself the last ten years? It was only once, it was only a mistake, — Brienne, we spent the better part of a _month_ in bed.” 

“You went back to Cersei,” she said again. “You made it clear that it didn’t matter what I thought, or wanted. You left me.”

“You told me you never wanted to see me again. Was that before you took the pregnancy test? Or after.” He shut his eyes. “Nevermind. I know the answer.”

She sat down on the nearest chair and tried to calm her breathing. “I knew you’d go back to her.”

“So it didn’t matter that I had a child — that we had one? Did you even tell him who his father is?”

“Kem doesn’t know,” she said, dull. 

“I don’t know what?” said her son, coming in the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dumb idea, but i couldn’t get the thought of Jon Arryn saying “THE SEED IS STRONG” out of my head, and thinking how the first 500 pages of ASOIAF are taken up by Ned Stark trying to solve the question of whether or not Jaime and Cersei are sleeping together
> 
> and all the while this great mystery could have been resolved simply by asking Jaime, who talks about it FREAKING CONSTANTLY omg Jaime why are you like this
> 
> anyway: the Lannister seed is strong too


	15. xv: a Christmas party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> glimpses of a Christmas party.
> 
> (or: the holiday fic that didn’t go anywhere but maybe you will find it diverting?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 12 December 2019.

“I love Christmas,” said Sansa, surprising no one. “Ribbons on the tree, candles in the windows ...”

“Gingerbread cooling on the stove ... if there’s any left after Arya attacked it ...”

“... and Brienne hanging up the mistletoe. Have you made a wish yet?”

“It isn’t a birthday candle,” she said, unnecessarily brusque. “Pardon, I have to wash this off my hands.”

She went to the kitchen sink, where the gingerbread did appear significantly nibbled at the edge: and her nemesis followed. “Seems apt, doesn’t it?” Jaime said. 

“What?”

“Mistletoe being poisonous. I’ve heard you have a deadly kiss.”

She scrubbed under her nails with somewhat more force than was strictly necessary. “I did not kill anyone.”

“Ron Connington just fell in that fire on his own, did he?”

Brienne dried her hands, not replying.

“He wasn’t strong enough to handle you.” Jaime smiled. “I’m strong enough.”

“Go away, Lannister.”

“Make me,” he said.

  
*

  
The music was playing, drinks poured, and a disinterested Brienne was sipping a slightly flat Coke.

“Virgin?” said Jaime, at her elbow. He was halfway through his third glass of champagne, not that she was counting.

“You’d better be asking about the drink,” she said. “Are you driving home tonight? You know the Starks won’t let you drive.”

He answered slowly. “I had hoped to get a ride from a friend.”

“You have friends?” said Brienne. 

*

  
“Dance with me, lady Brienne.”

“I don’t dance.”

“Everyone can dance!”

“I can’t!”

But the room was loud and he pretended not to hear her, and soon she was laughing — not with Jaime but at him, because he was flailing around like he had no bones. Idiot. “You look like an idiot,” she told him, and he shook his head, pointing at his ear — 

I can’t hear you —

so she pulled him away, out of the room. “You look like an idiot,” she told him, breathless. “A bloody moron. Didn’t you ever learn to dance at those boarding schools?”

“Sure I did. Waltz, rumba, —“

“That doesn’t count, Lannister.”

He was smiling at her. He said: “You’re standing under the mistletoe.”

“I am not.” She was. She stepped back. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Nevermind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I’m going to write a fic about making a wish on the mistletoe.”  
“That ... that isn’t a thing people do.”  
“They OUGHT to do it. I’ll call it Wish-letoe.”  
“Don’t name it that.”  
“Kiss-letoe?”  
“That is a terrible title and this is a bad idea.”


	16. xvi: ser

_Jaime Lannister _she says to Sansa (no - ser Jaime she must call him) —_ ser Jaime has never done anything inappropriate._

Not recently, anyway. Not since he lost his hand and his sister and his hopes, and showed up at Winterfell to follow her around like the tail on the dog.

The gods know he did plenty of inappropriate things before that. Staring at her betweenlegs when she rowed; mocking her virginity; speaking about himself and Cersei in the most vulgar words, things she couldn’t repeat except to herself, at night, wondering if he thought of her like that. _Lick_, he’d said, and _cunt_, and _wet_; and even now remembering it, her face flushes hot.

_You trust him? _says Sansa._ He is changed?_

_I think, says Brienne, that he is now is who he always was. But yes, my lady. I trust him._

Sansa looks as if she wants to speak or argue and does not. _I will take him on your word._

What would Jaime say to that? What would he have said? _My lady likes to play the man, maybe. _Or_ Flattering, but I am uninterested._

_Brienne?_

_Beg pardon, _says Brienne,_ and I will see that he lives up to your expectations._

At night she thinks — not of his hands (hand) on her body, passing over her breasts and hips and mound — but of what she said. This is who he always was. She hadn’t meant to say it.

Did that mean it was true?

He is still there, the man who taunted her and needled her and — and he helped her too, for no reason save kindness. He is still Jaime. (_Ser_ Jaime.)

And her heart beats at her throat and her wrists and between her legs, when she sees him. Thinks of him.

It wasn’t difficult to be a virgin, before. She didn’t lay awake and mourn it.

Now —

She turns to her side and closes her eyes and it doesn’t help, it doesn’t free her. She still sees the shadow of everything she gave up when she said _No_.


	17. xvii: waking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime wakes up at Casterly Rock.   
(unfinished.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 12 October ‘19.

His eyes hurt.

His eyes hurt, his jaw hurt, his elbows and ribs and knees hurt, and so did every single bone and sinew in his hands. He didn’t know there were so many places to hurt.

“Is he,” someone said, and

“Perhaps later,” and

“Father will be so glad,” in a dry voice that seemed like Tyrion.

If it was his brother — if Tyrion were here — Jaime wanted to see him. 

He tried to get up, tried to move, and the pain shifted.

Someone lifted his head; someone brushed hair from his face. “Drink this, Jaime.”

He drank, and slept.

  
Waking was painful and so was sleeping, and the worst was drifting between them in this haze. A dark voice spoke; someone else laughed, too loud and too long. His hand burned like fire, he was on fire, why wouldn’t they put it out?

“Sleep —“

  
This time he woke truly.

He saw the room and the sheets and was confused only a moment, thinking a maester? before he moved and the pain moved and he dropped his head back, moaning: but not before he saw his hand.

Now Tyrion was there, snapping back curtains and flooding the room with light. “You’ve slept too much, the maester says. You need stimulation. Food and exercise. You are to be denied anything especially interesting in the way of either pursuit, I’m sorry to say, but hopefully soon ...”

“Fuck the maester. Where the fuck did you come from? Aren’t you in Dorne? Or is it Essos?”

“Your perceptive mind will note the quantity of the water outside the windows, — the waves look alarmingly close at this perspective, don’t they? — and the air of gently aging madness.” 

“Casterly. We’re at Casterly Rock.”

“Father wanted you away from ... noise.” Meaning: Cersei, Robert. The children. Meaning the bustle of Kings Landing, as a whole. 

“How generous and thoughtful of him.”

“He is a generous and thoughtful man.”

Jaime looked away from the sympathy in that gaze. “You came? But he isn’t here.”

“He sent a bird. Many. An unkindness of ravens. I wasn’t certain you were going to wake. I arrived —“

“When?”

“A sennight past.”

A week. “I’ve been asleep a week?”

More than that, said Tyrion’s expression. “I am glad to see you. Awake. And unharmed.”

“Most of me. What happened? I remember ...” 

Nothing. 

Noise. Argument. The flash of a blade.

“You need to rest,” said his brother. “I’ll send back the nurse.”

  
They were dosing him off the poppy, giving less and less, and someone was rattling things around nearby: between the noise and the pain he woke in no kind mood. He squinted at the form. “Gods, is that a woman!”

She stiffened. “I’m here to nurse you.”

“Then do so.”

She didn’t reply — only changed his bandages (Jaime looked away) and washed the wound (Jaime swore) and put a cool hand to his forehead, with the calm temerity of one who feels she has the right. “You are warm,” she said. “Have you eaten today?”

“No.”

“I’ll send for broth.”

“How exciting.” He hesitated. “The light was poor. When I spoke. I should not have said that. I would not have, if I were thinking clearly.”

“It’s nothing to me what you think or say,” said the woman: and left, with her tray of jingling vials and rolls of fresh bandages, the old filthy ones tied in a cloth.

Jaime lay back and wondered where the hell Tyrion was.

  
“Seven, two, and a five for me.”

“You’ve put yourself in way of my dragon.”

“Tyrion. Are you teaching me or playing me?”

“There isn’t much game in playing against you when you barely notice that you and all the smallfolk will be consumed by dragonfire in a single turn. Are you even paying attention?”

“That septa,” said Jaime. “She’s very tall.”

“She’s no septa.”

That did catch his interest. “Not a virgin, then?”

“Gods, I wouldn’t know. Can you imagine me bedding such a creature? It would look like a pantomime. If you aren’t going to play properly, I’ll leave you to stare at the ceiling again.” He poured more wine. “You should open a window. It’s stuffy in here.”

“With one hand,” said Jaime.

“Call in the not-a-septa, if you don’t think you can manage it. I am quite comfortable as I am.”


	18. xviii: friends? with benefits (modern au)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they are friends, with benefits. 
> 
> ... the definition of “benefits” and “friends” might be up for debate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 14 December.

Brienne slid out of the bed, found her underpants and her shirt, and turned back to look at him.

Jaime was asleep. His mouth was parted, his hair was terribly messy, and though he was mostly covered by bedclothes, enough skin showed to remind her he was very naked under the sheets.

She left the room and made herself some coffee: and by the time he woke, she was gone.

*

They had been friends two years and sleeping together casually for almost three, minus the time one or another was in a relationship. She had picked him up in a bar, daring herself to talk to a beautiful stranger — and what was only meant to be a sloppy one-night-stand surprised them both by lasting an entire weekend and well into the next week before Brienne lost her patience and her temper, told Jaime to piss off, and kicked him out of her bed.

“Fine,” he said, and “bloody stupid wench” as he tugged on his jeans, and “I’ve had way better blow jobs” when she physically pushed him out the door, which certainly was not what he had said the night before.

When he’d gone she moved restlessly through her apartment, picking up trash. A pizza box; Pentoshi take-out. Jaime had a favorite way of burning off calories, and Brienne hadn’t complained one bit.

In the kitchen, scrawled on the whiteboard she kept for grocery lists, she found a phone number and a note

_Call me._

She should have erased it.

She didn’t. 

She stared at his number for a solid week before putting it in her phone with his name and a scowling emoji.

A month and two unsatisfying swipe-right experiences later, she called him.

He actually picked up, which she did not expect. “Who is this? How did you get this number?” 

She felt stupid. Entirely stupid. Like she was a child again, humiliated in front of the entire school. “Nevermind. I’ll go. Sorry to interrupt.”

_“Brienne?”_ He sounded like he was at a club. “I’m — sorry. Hold on. Let me get somewhere quiet.” The noise changed, muffling. Jaime said again: “Hello? Brienne? Are you there?”

“Do you always answer the phone like that?”

A pause. “It’s an unlisted number. I don’t usually give it out. And it had been so long, you didn’t call, I thought ...”

“You didn’t call me either,” she said.

“I don’t have your number. Are you ... is this just to chat?”

“Actually,” said Brienne, “I wondered if you would be interested in partial ownership of a timeshare.”

Another pause. Then: “You want to see me. You want to fuck.”

His voice made her skin heat up, when it dropped low. “Yeah. I thought maybe you’d like another terrible hummer.”

“Did I say that? Of course I did. Are you still living in that shitty apartment? — Good. I’ll be there in thirty.”

He tasted of whiskey and smelled faintly of tobacco, and when they were finished, Brienne said: “You smoke?”

Jaime looked at her oddly. “My brother does. We were celebrating his birthday.”

“You left your brother to ...”

“Believe me, Tyrion understands.”

“He doesn’t worry about you?”

Something passed over his expression. “No,” he said. “He doesn’t worry. Am I staying the night, lady Brienne?”

She stretched out her leg along his. A long leg, finely muscled and with so much golden skin. “What’s your refractory period like?”

He slipped his hand between her thighs. “What about yours?”

He lingered at the doorway, ignoring how Brienne was ignoring him. “You should give me your phone number.”

She rolled her eyes. “So you can harrass me every time you get horny?”

“Yes,” he said.

  
  


He didn’t call her often. She didn’t call him often. And they didn’t sleep over, and she didn’t go to his place (“You wouldn’t like it”), until she started to think he was ... what? 

“Married. Cheating. Some sort of Russian spy. I don’t fucking know, Jaime! Normal  
people have people over.”

“You assume I am normal,” he said.

“Piss off, then. If it’s such a hassle.”

“I rather like things as they are,” he said. “I don’t want them to change. That’s all.”

She shook her head at him. This wasn’t a big thing — they weren’t a big thing. It was just friends, sleeping together. “Why would anything change?”

“They won’t. I’m dumb.”

“Jaime —“

“We can go now.”

“Now? Are you sure? I don’t mean to pry.”

“Yes. You do. And I’d rather get it over with.” He looked severe. Cold.

Brienne said: “If you want.”

  
*

  
She understood the problem when they were still a mile out from the house. Jaime had to roll down the car window and enter numbers into a keypad —

“A gated community?”

“Something like that.”

— but after that, well. What could she say that wouldn’t make her sound like Lizzie Bennet, seeing Pemberly?

So she didn’t say anything.

Jaime tossed his keys onto a little marble-topped table in the foyer and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “It was my father’s.”

“He gave it to you?”

“Left it to me. I was his favorite child — which isn’t saying much. He was an asshole and he hated everyone, and he willed me his ridiculous house, presumably hoping it would act as a millstone and drag me down into the sweet oblivion of proper behavior.”

Brienne went to look at the nearest oil painting. “Did it work? Are you a good boy?”

“No,” said Jaime, terse. “Are you going to call me a bourgeois pig? Or do you want to find a bedroom.”

”Do I need a map?” inquired Brienne.

Jaime grabbed her by the hand and lead he way. 


	19. xvix: the Maid is married

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On her twenty-third name day, the Maid of Tarth was married in a proper sept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 28 October 2019.

On her twenty-third name day, the Maid of Tarth was married in a proper sept, with her friends and family watching.

Her own colors were changed for those of her new family, and she had a brief moment of gratitude that he was tall enough to do this without causing either of them embarrassment; bad enough that she had to bend down a little to receive his kiss, dry and formal and stiff against her mouth.

And that was it. They were wed.

She made it through the last minutes of the ceremony and out of the sept without meeting the eye of Jaime, standing near Podrick.

She could bear everything but that.

In her own chambers for the last time, she stripped out of the heavy gown, hands shaking. 

When someone knocked on the door, she didn’t answer.

The feast was next — a banquet they called it in Kings Landing, but she was a girl of Tarth and she called it plain. 

Her father looked so proud. She swallowed hard and went back to picking at her food.

“You’ve no appetite,” said her husband, in a low tone. “I hope you do not suffer from nerves, my lady.”

Brienne made herself smile at him. “Not at all. Only a dull stomach from too much wine and prayer.”

He patted her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, apparently not altogether believing her, and turned to talk cheerfully with the gentleman on his other side.

He was covering up for her shortcomings; he was not drawing attention to her discomfort. He was kind and solicitous, always. Truly she couldn’t have married a better man.

She took a drink of wine and a deep breath and glanced around the room, trying to feel calm — trying to seem that way, no matter how she felt — trying, above all, not to look at Jaime. 

She looked at him.

His eyes were clear and bright and green as summer, even across the room.  
And now she did feel sick.

  
Tarth had no tradition of a bedding ceremony, and her husband did not argue with the request to abstain from it: so she was spared that much at least.

Nevertheless he rose midway through the meal to make apologies to the guests. “My wife and I must to bed, before all this fine food make me — makes us incapable.” He caught her hand and held it comfortably. “I would prefer not to disappoint Brienne on our very first night together.”

Laughter. Comments. Suggestions.

He smiled at all of it. “Ready?” he said to her.

She nodded, and rose, and left.

  
Her husband undressed her easily and kissed her gently, and when they were between the sheets she remembered what Jaime had said all those years before and _went away._

When she woke again he was asleep: and Brienne dressed and washed her face and slipped out of the room.

  
She found Jaime in the stable yard, as expected. He was brushing her horse, saying something low into the mare’s sleepy ear: and when it twitched forward to announce Brienne’s presence, Jaime said, without looking up: “You had a lovely wedding.”

“Thank you.” Stupid to feel tongue-tied around him; stupid to feel angry. “I appreciate you attending.”

“Do you?” he said.

“Of course I —“

“You shouldn’t have done it.”

The lovely mare tossed her head; Jaime was tense.

So was Brienne. She said “I’m so grateful to have your opinion —“

“You were a fool to agree —“

“—especially now that it’s too late to change anything.”

“How is it too late? You’re still here.”

Meaning, she had not yet left with her husband. “Very true.”

“And I am still here.” Jaime cleared his throat; he set down the combs. “We are here together.”

“Don’t,” said Brienne. “Don’t you start.”

“You came to see me. Did you not want to talk?”

“I did,” she said. “I don’t now. Good night.”

He caught her arm. “Wait.”

She shook him off and looked him in the face. “You had time to speak to me — for me, — and you didn’t.”

“I didn’t know,” said Jaime, low and angry. “I swear to you that I didn’t know how I felt. How you felt. Brienne, _I didn’t know.”_

No one else made her feel like he did, moving from desire to fury in a moment, like they were too entwined to unfurl. 

But she believed him. “And now that you know: now what? You didn’t make a big dramatic gesture, Jaime. You didn’t run away with me. You didn’t knock anyone down in the sept. You let me stand there —“

“_You_ did it, Brienne. Maybe I should have said something, and maybe you should have not gotten married —“

“Stop talking over me,” she said. Yelled.

“You’re in love with me and you made vows to someone else and if that is what you call honor ...”

Gods, her head hurt. And her stomach, and her heart, and the place between her legs. “Doing what I vowed to do, doing what is best for my family and my people, no matter what my personal feelings? That’s honor.”

“That’s bullshit,” said Jaime.

As if he knew from honor, anyway. She turned around and left. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jaime knows Honor is a horse.


	20. xx: an attempt was made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> someone attempts to assassinate Brienne; someone attempts to flirt with her. 
> 
> no one succeeds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 2 January 2020.

The crash of steel on steel had awoken her; now she found a sword in her hand and her feet moving forward without thought, going through the steps she’d practiced endlessly. _Only practice makes the body understand_, her swordmaster had said. _You must exhaust the mind, and then —_

She killed a man and his blood sprayed out, blinding her, stinging her eyes. There was another one — another shadow in the room — but it turned to the window and barely hesitated at the height before it boosted out and was gone.

Alone, Brienne tried to catch her breath.

Outside the room there were footsteps — and a shout and a gasp and a muffled curse — and then more footsteps, running. And a noise like knives on stone.

She held the sword and jerked open the door —

Jaime Lannister stood there.

His sword was on the floor — that was the clattering she’d heard — and his hand was at his waist like he was preparing to bow to her. “My lady,” he said.

“You were outside my rooms,” said Brienne.

“Yes,” he said. “Well — yes.” 

“Why are you outside my rooms?”

His expression would be called embarrassment on any other man. “I heard rumors there might be trouble.”

“Rumors?”

“Yes, Brienne. Rumours. Come on, you’re not usually this slow.”

“Who would want to hurt me?” she said: she wiped the blood off her face with the back of her hand. “Who would bother?”

“Now is not the time to argue about your relative importance in the world,” said Jaime. “I need to tell you something.”

He was still holding his side, and the hall was dark and his tunic was dark, but the darkness was spreading at his waist and suddenly she thought she understood him better than she’d ever done before.

He said, “You look so much like a cow when you’re upset. I shouldn’t say that, you’ll take it the wrong way. Soft eyes, Brienne. You have soft eyes. Even when you’re running a man through. Did you kill anyone tonight?”

“Only one,” she said. “Jaime, stop talking. We’ll get you a maester ...” But her feet wouldn’t move.

“I’m almost done. I only needed to tell you that I love you.”

“Don’t start with that shit,” she said, really cross.

He laughed, pushing hair out of his face, and then he fell to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cows have lovely big gentle eyes. i’m serious! go look deep into the eyes of a cow — you’ll see.


	21. xxi: Stoneheart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after Stoneheart, Brienne cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 05 january 2020.
> 
> this is absolutely not what i wanted to write. it’s so annoying!

They’re in the forest — again, in the forest — and Brienne is crying.

Jaime has never seen her cry before. 

He wants to tell her it’s fine, it isn’t a weakness, she doesn’t need to cover her face like that, she doesn’t need to hold back the sobs until they rip out of her — _it’s all right, _he wants to say. _I understand. _

He understands.

He sobbed like that when they took his hand, like he hadn’t cried since he was a child — like something had mattered and now it was lost. _My hand, _he couldn’t stop thinking, stupid with it. _My hand my hand they took my hand my sword hand my hand_

And now Brienne is crying, too.

He moves over to her; he sits down, clumsy on the ground, feeling heavy and stiff. “Don’t,” he says to her. “She isn’t worth this.”

“I killed her,” Brienne says, between those horrible raking breaths. “I p-promised, and then I killed her. Why does that keep happening?“

“I’m the one who killed Stoneheart,” says Jaime. “Or the Freys did, or mayhaps it was the river. She died long long ago, at any rate, and whatever came back was a monster, it was something wrong and false with a human voice, and the best thing was to end it, and I did that, and _none of this is your fault_.” He stops. “You’re not listening.”

She is not. “Why can’t I help people?” she says. “That girl in the courtyard — the men were going to hurt her, they said it —“

“What men?”

“I did what you did. I stepped in, I offered myself. And it didn’t w-work. I’m not strong enough. Or they were too many. Biter had me down in the mud and rode me and gods help me, I thought I was dying —“

“Breathe,” he says to her. He rubs her back in small circles, meaning to comfort. “Breathe slow. You didn’t die.”

“But what happened to the girl?” she says, choking. “Jaime, I can’t help _anyone_.”

“Breathe.”

“I was to find you, she wanted to kill you, I said I wouldn’t —“

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t do it,” she repeats, stubborn, like he’s arguing with her. “I wouldn’t let them kill you.”

“I know.” And he does know.

Jaime shifts away and she turns to him, she is all eyes and mouth, red with grief, tears over nothing. 

And he kisses her.

Brienne kisses back like she’s angry, grabbing hold of him around the neck and pulling him nearer — nails and teeth and tongue, and he’s never regretted the loss of his hand as much as he does now, because her laces are tied and tucked away somewhere and he can’t find the knot and she isn’t helping, not one bit, not with how she’s kissing him and fumbling at his clothes like she doesn’t have two good hands, making those soft whimpers when he finds her hips and presses against her, he needs her — needs to be inside her, Brienne — 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by her own reckoning, brienne “failed” renly, catelyn, the Stark girls, and the girl at the inn — and probably more that i’ve forgotten.
> 
> (& til GRRM tells me otherwise, i’ll go on believing that Brienne saved the girl at the inn because Jaime did it for her ...)
> 
> i also need to mention that, per canon, Brienne’s arm is broken or splinted or something, so she couldn’t be covering her face right here. that’s the sort of detail i should not give a shit about: and YET.


	22. xxii: the hooker with a hand of gold (modern au)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brienne visits the local prostitute.   
as one does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 05 january 2020!

When Brienne was born, her grandfather started a savings account for her and primed it with a few hundred. Probably he meant her to use it for college or something. Probably he is rolling in his grave right now, knowing why she is at the ATM and withdrawing half the cash.

Or maybe not, she thinks. He was her father’s father, after all, and Selwyn has never been circumspect. Maybe a certain amount of uncontrollable horniness is totally normal for their family.

... She should really stop thinking about her family.

Think about Jaime Lannister, she tells herself. She’s sitting in her car outside his house, rubbing her nervous, sweaty.

His light is on. He’s home. He’s available.

He’s also a prostitute.

He’s also _beautiful_. Even if she were comfortable with this — with visiting him like this — paying for it — the beauty of the man would give her pause.

But it’s Friday night. If she waits long enough, someone else will come by.

And Brienne has waited long enough.

*

He doesn’t seem surprised to see her. He doesn’t seem surprised when she sits on his couch and stumbles through her preplanned “I just want to get it over with” speech. He only nods, like gawky, overly-tall virgins come through his door every day.

Maybe they do.

He accepts her money and counts it out (“You’ll forgive me for being cautious”) and drops it into a safe mounted inside the wall — 

“Are there any rules?” says Brienne.

“Like what?”

“Like ... like no kissing.”

He does not actually roll his eyes but it seems like a close thing. “This isn’t _Pretty Woman_. Kissing is fine. So is oral, and so is anal — in that order, if we’re bareback. I prefer condoms to protect both of us, but everything legal can be negotiated. Including bondage, rough sex, fetishes. Threesomes and orgies.”

He pauses. “This is where you tell me what you want.”

Heat creeps over her face.

Jaime nods, he’s seen this before. “Plain vanilla sex? Foreplay?”

“Um —“

He smiles at her. The businessman falls away. He’s calm and bold and confident, looking at her like ... like ...

“Kissing,” she says. “I want to kiss you.”

So he kisses her.

It’s not especially soft or experimental, and it’s not languid or dreamy — nor rough and strange and presuming. She was afraid of all that.

Instead, he is ... warm. Sure of himself, sure of her. And her certainty rises to meet him.

When he pulls away, he’s smiling — and so is she.

”Let’s go,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to write complete fics, i really do. it just isn’t happening right now :/


	23. xxiii: seven months, four weeks, six days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it’s been awhile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written december 21 2019 & february 08 2020.

Seven months, four weeks and six days since he’d had a woman.

That was undoubtedly why his cock was slowly hardening.

Gods. This had seemed so easy. _Take a bath. You _need_ to bathe, _and when she protested he shrugged: _I’ll keep guard inside if you like. We’ve seen one another bare plenty enough._

She’d blushed at that but gave in, with the same graceless stubbornness that she always had. Stupid, ignorant ...

Jaime cleared his throat, because Brienne was naked.

Broad shoulders and freckles and the smallest tits he’d seen on a woman grown, stretched out over muscle. Her long thick thighs, yes, he remembered them too, and the hair at their peak.

His cock twitched.

Brienne let out a long sigh and began to wash herself. The sound of splashing came; the sound of a rough cloth moving over a wet body.

Jaime stared at the blank canvas tent.

Think of Pia, if you need to think of someone. Pretty Pia, with her dark hair and ready smile. Eager Pia. She wasn’t so pretty nowadays but she was still willing enough to lay with half the men in —

“Jaime?”

He cleared his throat. “Yes.” No response. Maybe she hadn’t heard. He tried again. “Brienne? Do you ...”

“I don’t need to soak here, like an idle lady. Do — do you want the bath after me?”

His turn now to be silent.

“I’ll get out,” she said, “and I’ll take it out of the tent, too.” There was a great rush of water leaving her body as she stood; there was the sound of splashing as she dried her skin with a shift, and pulled over a tunic, and stepped out of the water, padding on the dirt.

She touched his arm, and Jaime turned. “You’re welcome to the water,” she said. “It’s warm still. Or I’ll clear it away.”

Her voice was slow. _Plodding_ he would have called it, if he hadn’t seen the brightness in her eyes, the pink in her cheeks that deepened to a wine-dark stain as she looked at him. 


	24. xxiv: pokémon au

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> modern pokemon au, because reasons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 12 February 2020.

It was the worst day of Jaime’s life.

He came out of a brown study and back to himself on the bus heading downtown — and realized he barely had a Stag to his name. 

A Lannister with nothing a backpack, a Stag, and a disrespectful pokémon. And on public transportation. Whatever would his father say?

He turned to the window and tried not to think about his father. Or his sister. Or his brother.

Gods, don’t think about Tyrion.

“Hey,” said someone, and louder: “_Hey.”_

He ignored it.

“Hey. Pretty boy. Your Jiggly is really rude.”

“My —“ Surely it wasn’t conceited to know that ‘pretty boy’ had to be referring to him. “What are you talking about? How do you know what she said?” He squirmed around, trying not to touch anyone. There were too many people on this bus, no wonder his father — “Gods, are you a _woman?”_

The woman (if that’s what she was) snorted, not at all elegantly. “She gets it from you, then.”

“No. She doesn’t. She isn’t mine.”

“Good try. She said she’s yours.”

“How the hell —“

And he clutched the edge of his seat, nearly toppling off, as the bus lurched. The woman stood up, too, and for a moment Jaime was grateful he wasn’t the only one affected by the ratting inconvenience of city life, — but she only stood and took her bag and stepped down through the open doors.

Jaime took his bag, scruffed the Jigglypuff like it was an errant cat, and followed.

She had a long stride; she was half down the block by the time Jaime-and-baggage caught up, and although she probably heard them (“Jigglypuff!!” the irritating creature squawked at every step, never been one for restraint), the woman gave no sign.

“How,” Jaime said, “do you know what this pokémon is saying?”

The woman stared down the bridge of her nose at him. Gods, she was tall. And distressingly blonde. And she didn’t seem at all impressed by Jaime’s appearance, which (to Jaime) was quite impressive. “Pokémon _speak_,” she said, as if she were talking to a child. “I _hear_ them.”

“No one else hears them.”

“I’m sure that everyone on the bus heard your Puff ranting and raving.”

“My — oh, no. She isn’t mine.”

“She said otherwise. Repeatedly.”

“How do you know what she’s saying? She isn’t _your_ poké.”

For the first time, she looked — uncertain? Wary? “I understand them. It’s how it is. And this one doesn’t like you.” She frowned at him. “I don’t like you, either.”

“Are you a trainer?”

She stared at him, openly suspicious now. “Who’s asking?”

Jaime hesitated.

The Jiggly puffed a sentence. It did not sound complimentary.

“I agree, wholeheartedly,” said the woman.

“I’m — my name’s Lannister, alright? And the poké really isn’t mine. She belongs with my brother. He’s missing. And I can’t ask her where he is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know nothing about pokemon at all, which was undoubtedly clear to anyone who knows even a smidgeon.


	26. xxvi: how i met your mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> idiots in love. (and there’s a kid.)
> 
> short cute happy fic set in a kinder, gentler Westeros.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 11 February 2020.

“Love at first sight,” said Jaime. “The first time I met your mother, I fell madly in love with her.”

“Princes _always_ love the princessess, in a story,” said his daughter. “Was it like a story?”

“Exactly like in a story. She was tall and golden and beautiful, and I thought: That’s the girl for me!”

(She had spent the better part of a month rolling her eyes at everything he said, and the only things they had in common were blisters and irritation.)

“And did she love you right then too?”

“She did.”

(After four days of monsoon they paid for an inn, hoping it would at least keep off the rain for a night.

Instead they spent a week in bed, emerging only for food and a change of sheets and another bottle of wine.)

“And then you decided to get married and live together forever and have me.”

“Yes,” said Jaime. “That’s how it happened.”

(When Brienne turned up pregnant, she punched Jaime in the face; when he offered to marry her, she burst into tears and refused. _I don’t want your duty, _she said.)

Jaime kissed his daughter. “Sleep,” he said. “Dream of flying.”

And so she did.

“The first time I met you,” he said to his wife, “I fell in love with you.”

“_Love_ is a strong word,” said Brienne. “Are you going to eat that last slice of bread?”

“And you also fell in love with me, of course. That’s how it always happens.”

“You were covered in mud and shit, and refused to listen to a thing I said.”

“Just how you like it,” said Jaime

and Brienne laughed aloud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do you think Jaime has both hands in this AU? i’m gonna say ... Probably


	27. xxvii: newborn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after Cersei dies, Jaime returns to Winterfell.

He leaves her alone, weeping in the cold — and Brienne always knew he would, she doesn’t blame him for who he is. 

She blames him when he comes back.

Saddle-sore and weary, riding a horse half dead, he stops in the stableyard at Winterfell and nearly falls out of his seat — hard enough to stay on with one hand, and he’s off-balance, holding his false hand across his chest tight, over a lump  there.

Real hands are there to catch him, voices talking about what to do, saying _Ser Jaime?_, calling for a maester, calling for the lady Stark. _Catelyn_ he thinks a moment, thinking he’s back in a cell again — or a cage — it would explain the smell of shit and the rain in his face and the fierce, furious redhaired woman who stares down at him now.

She is supposed to be dead. Someone pulled her body out a river, naked and swollen and blue, sliced ear to ear at a wedding. “You’re dead,” he tells her. “Aren’t you?”

“No one wants you here,” Sansa tells him — which is not the same as forbidding him entrance. “You should have known better.”

“I had no where else to go,” Jaime says. 

And now Brienne is arrived, mutely accusing.

“We had no where else to go,” says Jaime again: and the lump lets out a tiny, hungry wail.

Jaime really is tired: that much at least wasn’t a lie. He falls asleep almost as soon as he’s undressed, leaving her alone with the squirming squalling infant quite as if she knows anything about babies.

She lets it gum on her finger a moment.

Jaime — who looks disgustingly at peace right now — hasn’t left her a better option. There’s no wetnurse to be had in Winterfell and precious little milk.

What were you thinking? she wants to ask him: but he’s asleep, mouth parted, his hair more silver than gold.

“What were you thinking?” she says, when the child screams loud enough to wake a wright, and Jaime is upright and frowning.

He says: “It’s my child.”

“You don’t know that.”

He looks at her. “Our child.”

“No,” says Brienne, really angry now.

The goats milk isn’t enough and there’s nothing else and the baby won’t stop fussing, so Brienne gives him her breast and it’s enough, for a while; he sucks on nothing and falls asleep.

He has dark hair and bright eyes. He looks like Cersei. “He looks like you,” she says to Jaime.

He doesn’t seem pleased or displeased, as she was expecting, as she feared; he only looks tired. “More likely he looks like Euron.”

“Why do you claim him, then?”

“Should I have let the child die with his mother? Is that what you would have done, Brienne?” He stares at her. “You have not let him die yet.”

“Do not put this on me. This is your child, Jaime Lannister. Not mine.” But she smooths the soft hair back from his face.

Later that day she lets him suck again, daring Jaime to say a single goddamned word.

He leaves awhile, returning with gruel and a rag — “You twist it, and dip it —“

“Like you do with baby cows?” says Brienne, much amused: but he takes over the feeding and changing and cleaning, and Brienne can escape outside awhile to swing a sword at a dummy and pretend that it is a Lannister.

That night the baby sleeps and Jaime comes to her — she lets him — for the first time since he left. 

They don’t speak. There’s nothing to say. He pushes inside her rough and hard and she bites down on his neck, burning her lips and tongue on the beard.

When he finishes, he kisses her and groans out her name.

She didn’t come. Irritated, frustrated, she says: “Did you say Cersei’s name — at the end — when you fucked her?”

“Brienne,” he says. “Don’t.”

“How can I ever believe this is Euron’s son?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t want to raise a child with you.”

He doesn’t respond for a while. “I might have put one in you tonight,” he says.

“You didn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Goddammit, Jaime! You left me. How can I —“

The baby begins to cry, then, and Jaime gets up. He brings it back to bed and falls asleep with it in his arms, soft and warm and smelling strongly of shit.

Brienne tries to hate both of them and fails.

“You look good like this,” he tells her, later. “A child at your breast.”

The babe is only resting there, nuzzling — and it isn’t her child. It might be his but it isn’t hers.

She reminds him.

“I know that,” he says, tired.

At night Jaime pulls on her breast like he’s an infant, and she pulls him inside, closer, legs around his back. More.

“I love you,” he says into her mouth. “I love you.”

“I thought you died with Cersei.”

“I know.”

“You should have died.”

“I know,” kissing her face, kissing away the tears. “I know. I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is all very angsty and bad. i know. i’m sorry


	28. at Tarth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after a while on the continent, lady Brienne returns to Tarth.
> 
> (book-canon, set like a month afterwards.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is sad. i’m sorry. it’s been a hard week

She was not a quitter. She was _not_. She did not run away from fear or painful things, — had she ever? She’d broken the collarbone of a grown man when she was barely sixteen, she’d fought the great Jaime Lannister and damn near killed him, she had sworn and spit at the Bloody Mummers when they had her tied to ser Jaime, his rotting hand between them like a good luck charm, she had — she would —

She saw the edge of Tarth rising before her, turned grey and green with morning fog and burst into tears.

She was still red-eyed, still ashamed, when she found the Evenstar in his chambers.

“Father,” she said. “I’m home.”

Selwyn insisted she see the maester to have her face and her arm bound up again, properly, — “Who did this, child?”

— and instead of explaining who hurt her, she found herself talking about the brothers of the Quiet Isle, how someone had taken her there while she was half-dead from fever and pain, dreaming mad things about teeth and swords. Magic swords. “I still have his sword,” she told her father, realizing it. “I put it in my bedroll, to hide it — protect it. I didn’t _mean_ to take it,” she said, as if her theft were the last thing, the worst insult on top of injury: and then she cried again, sobbing in great heaves.

And her father held her.

That night Brienne dreamt again of dark things, of a space in the darkness like a cave or a tunnel. In the distance was green fire, and when she turned she saw green eyes, the sight muting her voice. “Jaime,” she tried to say to him. “Ser, I have your sword — here, take it —”

But the scabbard was hot to the touch and her hand burned with pain. She reached out to grasp it again, thinking _I must give it to him, I must not fail him_ — but her hand was bone it was ash it was gone — and she fell to the ground.

Jaime bent down and kissed her cheek. “Hush,” he told her. “Be quiet, wench.”

“My name is _Brienne_—”

She woke with her body in a sweat, her face warm and sore, blood beating hard in her throat, her chest, between her legs.

Brienne shut her eyes. _Jaime,_ she thought. _I can’t._

But the night was dark and she was alone, and after a while she found that she could. 

“Will you be going back?” said her father. They were eating breakfast, and the little room was filled with light reflected in patterns off the sea.

_No_, she shook her head. “There is nothing to go back to. I’ve betrayed him. Failed him.”

“Who is it that you failed?” said her father. “Renly?”

“Ja — Ser Jaime Lannister.”

He gave her a long stare and didn’t reply.

A flush crept up her face. “Ser Jaime saved my life, and more than once. For no reason except that he could. He isn’t like his family.” 

“He slew Aerys. And there are rumors that he and his sister ...” Selwyn stopped.

Brienne could not say: _King Aerys was mad. _She could not say _Those rumors are true, he has said so._ Instead she picked at her meal, and did not answer.

“You do not care about either one of those things?”

“It is not like that. With him.”

“They say he is very beautiful,” said her father.

Again she blushed. “There is some truth in what they say.”

“So. He saved you.”

Selwyn was giving her an out, but this topic was almost as difficult to speak of as the other. She considered her words. “We were captured by a gang of men, and they took — they cut off his hand. His swordhand. As punishment, I think, for trying to ... to barter his way out. He offered them gold ...” She cleared her throat. “Later on, they — they wanted to rape me. They were arguing about it: should they all go together or one at a time? And ser Jaime, he was in and out of a wretched fever, sick all over himself in every way, he had no reason at all to help me or even notice,” —She could not keep her voice steady — “but he told lies to keep me safe. He didn’t have to do it. And it — it was my fault we were caught. My fault he lost his hand.”

“Sapphires,” said her father. “Yes. I remember that. I remember the raven that came here. They did not say what had happened to you.” He was looking at her still; she could not meet his eyes.

“I was cruel to him,” said Brienne to her wine. “He was in pain and still kind to me, and I mocked him, and ...” She did not finish.

Selywn ate in silence, wiping down his plate with a slice of bread before saying to her — “And?”

“And I took his sword.”

“And now you have to give it back.”

“I have to give it back,” said Brienne: and to her horror, felt the tears swell up again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brienne is one humorless girl but when she loses her temper at Jaime calling her “wench” — not at his many many other terrible insults, just that one — well, I can’t stop laughing about it. She is so mad about his nickname that she tries to drown him and very nearly succeeds, and I for one think that is just great. I wish her all the best


	29. a betting man (modern au)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two idiots have a meet-cute at a bar ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 4 November 2019.

Jaime took another drink. “Moaner or screamer?”

The woman blinked. “Beg pardon?”  She sounded as formally stiff as a boarding school ma’am.

“I said — are you a moaner or a screamer? In bed. Moaning,” and he demonstrated a breathy _uhh_, “or screaming?”

She eyed him. “Do you start all your conversations this way?”

“Yes,” said Jaime: and finished his drink. He motioned to the bartender for another. “Which is it, wench?”

“You’ll never know.”

“I could make you scream.”

“Not a chance of it.”

Jaime smiled at her. “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”

She made a face. “I need to go …somewhere else. Away from you.”

He didn’t like that. “You know what? Let’s — let’s make a bet. I’ll put down fifty dragons to say I can make you orgasm.” It was an obscene amount of money to pay for sex.

“You think I’m a prostitute?”

“Gods, no. Whores are _polite_. Whores lie about the size of your cock. I’m sure you will be devastatingly cynical about mine.” 

They also tended to be conventionally attractive, and dressed to show it off — at least the sort that a Lannister could afford. This woman was not beautiful, and “unfashionable” was the kindest adjective to give her clothes. 

She took a swig of her own drink. “You’re a fucking asshole.”

“Five hundred dragons,” said Jaime, thinking that somewhere his father was suddenly very angry with him, and did not know why. “Five hundred is my last offer.” It was all that he had in his accounts; he’d have to wire more from the Dornish banks. Who cared.

“Five — No. I couldn’t. What would happen if I lose? I can’t pay that sort of money.”

“Worried?”

She scowled at him. “No. And I’m not doing this with you .”

“Five hundred,” said Jaime. “And if you lose, you owe me nothing.”

“Sounds lovely. But I’m still not a prostitute.”

“Just — just a kiss, then.”

She stared at him. “Sure. For ten dragons.”

“Ten — that’s robbery!”

But she held out her hand and Jaime found the proper note in his wallet and 

_oh_ . 

Her mouth was soft and hot and the way she pushed against him, in no hurry to stop it — he felt himself hardening and could only pull away, clearing his throat,  wondering why he always seemed to end up betting more than he could bear to lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaime wins.


	30. xxx: the tape (modern au)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne has a cry; Tyrion has an idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 28 January 2020.

Tyrion was the one who found her crying. 

Brienne had just enough sense left to thank the gods it was him. Anyone else —Margaery, say — would have offered sympathy and kind words. Probably Sansa would have  touch ed her, rubbing circles on her back or something. Brienne couldn’t take that — not right now. She’d shatter. Worse: she’d start  _talking_ . And she didn’t need to talk. She needed to be alone and get it out and then go back to work and do her damn job.

Tyrion didn’t let her do that.

He didn’t say anything or do anything, aside from making sure the supply room door was closed; and then he sat down next to her and waited for her to finish.

When she had, he fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to her, because of course he was the sort of man who carried that sort of thing. “Here.”

“Thank you, no. I’ll just get a tissue. S-something.” Humiliating to have her voice shake. Humiliating to be sobbing in a closet, anyway. 

Tyrion still held it out. “You don’t want to leave here til you look more normal.”

He was right: but how did he know? So Brienne blew her nose. Inelegant to the core, it make a ghastly noise.

“I expect it’s none of my business why you’re upset,” he began, just as Brienne said:

“I got the _worst_ phone call, and —“

“And?” Gently.

She stared at the filthy handkerchief. It was linen, embroidered with his monogram, and it was beautiful. And she’d blown her nose in it like a schoolgirl. “I got a call from someone named Baelish.”

He looked thoughtful, but didn’t interrupt while she told the story. College, and a group of boys she thought were her friends — they played rugby with her, they joked around with her, they didn’t stare and call her names like — like some people did —

Tyrion nodded once, sharp.

And (she took a deep, shuddering breath) and it didn’t seem so far-fetched that one or two of them might be interested in dating her. It didn’t seem stupid to let Hyle kiss her at a party. It didn’t feel like she was ruining her life when he shut the door and turned the lock. They weren’t drinking and she hadn’t been roofied and she  liked Hyle, really she did, he was the nicest of all of them. And she wanted this.

The only thing she argued about was Hyle’s insistence they leave the lights on.

The sex wasn’t so bad, after all — not bad and not great. Just another disappointing experience to add to the list.

Hyle found his clothes and gathered his things and dressed and left, not speaking. So e ventually Brienne left, too.

The next day —

“We met for lunch, we always did, but they wouldn’t even look at me. Even Hyle.  _Especially_ Hyle. The others, though. Everytime I said something, they’d repeat it in a high-pitched voice, and laugh. Ron kept saying  _It’s too bright in here, Hyle._ And they l-laughed. They all laughed. Because he had taped it, of course.”

She cleared her throat. “I didn’t realize,” she said, “what it meant. Not right away. When I knew for sure ... what could I do? And now. The man who called — Petyr Baelish — he was asking if I wanted to do more work in the business. Apparently I’m quite popular among certain segments of the population. Freaks of nature are always a draw on the sideshow circut.” She rubbed her eyes. “I shouldn’t be bothered anymore. But it was the worst thing — one of the worst things that’s happened to me, and somehow I feel like it’s happening again every time I remember that video is still out there.”

“What would you want to do about it?”

“Nothing. There isn’t anything to do.”

“You misunderstand me,” said Tyrion. “Imagine I waved a magic wand and _voila! _you have all the money in the world and all the power that goes along with it ... in short, you’re a Lannister ...”

”Money isn’t power.”

”Very astute, my dear, but I assure you that no one will look closely enough to see the difference. So tell me:  what do you want to do about this?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the first chapter in a very long fic that won’t ever be written!
> 
> *
> 
> when this fic is discussed in literature classes (lol. can you imagine), the professor will ask about the meaning of the locked doors. Hyle did it and Tyrion did it, and neither asked Brienne’s permission; what does the author mean by this? is it a parallel meant to bring attention to male control and the different ways Brienne is “trapped” in “rooms” with her “emotions”? is the lock her vagina?? is the door feminism?? IS THAT WHAT THE AUTHOR MEANS???
> 
> no. the author does not mean that. the author means nothing at all. Tyrion locks the door because he doesn’t want anyone to see Brienne all weepy, and Hyle locks the door because he’s a selfish prick, and i really don’t think about symbolism that much because heavy symbolism is, generally speaking, super fucking irritating to everyone.


	31. xxxi: this one time on Tarth ... (canon era)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ... if Cersei and Jaime and Brienne were all little kids together on Tarth, ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 20 February 2020.

“It doesn’t look that far down.”

“It’s more than seventy feet.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Cersei, flat. “This is  _Tarth_ .”

Brienne turned to to Jaime: but he remained neutral, looking out over the water with narrowed eyes. 

She didn’t know why she bothered, really. When they were alone together, Jaime spoke to her as though she were a fellow human being; but pair him with Cersei and he refused to express an opinion that diverged from his twin’s. Even if it was about a cliff. Even — _especially_ — if it was to praise something in the Stormlands.

What a disappointment he was. And now he wasn’t even listening; he sat down on the ground and took off one boot and then the other. Gods knew what he was about. 

“It’s a very tall cliff,” Brienne said again, as if the island would crumble below the combined weight of Lannister scorn, if not for her defense to shore it up.

Cersei pressed her lips together. “The Rock sits higher by a dozen—”

And Jaime ran off the side of the cliff.

Brienne felt her heart fall through her ribs as he fell, yelling. That _idiot_, that arrogant,  brainless — Gods, could he even swim? 

Cersei grabbed at Brienne’s arm, babbling something that didn’t matter. 

Brienne shook her off, sighted the water, and ran off the edge.

She screamed too — couldn’t help it — but it was a mistake, filling her mouth and nose with water and stealing her breath. She kicked up hard and surfaced and slipped below again and surfaced and yelled for him, pushing wet hair out of her face, wishing the water weren’t so damn cold — “Jaime!”

And saw him, moving with long easy strokes towards the shoreline.

Brienne wiped her face again and struck out after him.

He had stripped off his tunic and was wringing it out when she came up behind him, feeling ready to drag him back to the ocean and drown him — the shock of relief at seeing he was alive had long since dissolved into fury. “Why’d you jump?”

“Why did _you?!”_

“I didn’t know you could swim!”

“Why the hell would I jump off a cliff if I couldn’t swim?” he said.

“Why would you jump off a cliff at all?” Brienne said, and then they were yelling. 

“I don’t need you to save me” — just as his sister came down the long curving path that lead down to the water. 

Brienne took a moment to thank her island for its steep trails: Cersei was both panting for breath and visibly sweating. She embraced her brother all the same. “You’re mad,” she told him, “you’re an idiot to take these risks”, and “Ugh — no, stop — you’re all wet!” because he was shaking out his hair like a dog. 

He smiled at her. “Well, I solved the argument, anyway. This cliff definitely isn’t as high as our cliffs around the Rock.”

Cersei laughed, delighted — and Brienne pushed past, furious with them both.

“I told you I didn’t need you to save me,”  Jaime called out.

“Don’t worry,” she snapped. “Next time I won’t bother.”

It was a long walk to Evenfall in damp shoes, squelching all the way, and every step made her more determined never again to stoop so low as to speak to a Lannister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> may i offer you an unfinished fic for these troubled times?


	32. xxxii: don’t pick up (modern au)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne is dating Hyle; Jaime is not-dating Cersei; everyone is a damn mess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 21 February 2020.

The phone buzzed, and then buzzed again. It woke her up — and it woke Hyle, too. He’d always been a light sleeper.

He squinted at her blue-lit face, in the darkness. “Turn that off and go to sleep.”

“Mm.”

_“Sleep.”_

She got up instead and started rummaging for her clothes. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Brie. Don’t.”

“Look,” — where was her bra? — “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He was sitting up now, too. “Is it Lannister?”

“Jeans,” said Brienne. “Jeans, jeans — Hyle, I can’t find — do you care if I turn on the light?”

He pointed, mute, and she saw where he meant and found them and pulled them on, tugging over her hips. 

She came back over and kissed him. “Don’t be jealous. He needs help. You know that’s all this is.”

“You’re not  _his_ fiancé,” said Hyle: but she had her hand on the door, she was turning the latch, she was gone.

The man on the steps was long and lean and wearing pajama bottoms covered in penguins — a gift from his niece. He was barefoot, bare-chested, and when he raised his head, she could see he’d been crying.

“You came,” said Jaime. He had his prosthetic in his lap, like an offering. Whether he was too tired or too high to put it back on, she didn’t want to ask. It didn’t seem to matter. “You’re here,” he said.

“I shouldn’t be,” said Brienne. She sat next to him. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Cersei locked me out.”

“She said she would.”

He stared at her — oh, so beautiful. She always forgot how beautiful he was. — Forgot, or couldn’t remember, like he was too much for her mind to hold. “I need a place to stay.”

_Not with me,_ she wanted to say. _I can’t keep doing this for you. _But if she refused, where else could he go? He was too pretty to sleep on the streets. “Come home with me, then,” she said. “We have room.”

She gave Jaime a spare blanket and one of her own sleeping pills and a glass of water to drink it down with: she felt his forehead and gave him two paractemol, as well. 

He caught her arm and her breath caught in her throat. “Thank you,” he said.

“I left your hand on the table. Try to be gone before Hyle wakes up.“

“I will.”

“Lock the door, too.”

“I will,” he said. “Brienne?”

“... Jaime?”

“Thank you.”

Breathe. Breathe. “He gets up early,” she said.

Hyle was asleep when she came back to bed, and he was gone when she woke.

So was Jaime.

She tried not to be disappointed by that, tried not to notice that he hadn’t texted her, tried not to care that he had actually done the decent thing and folded the blanket, replaced the pillows, locked the door.  When had he started picking up after himself?

She wandered to the kitchen — Jaime had rinsed out the glass he’d used and let it sit on the drainboard, not knowing where the teatowels were. Maybe he didn’t know how to use one.

She tried to think of what that must be like — being alien to the normal reality of jobs, bills, chores. He was trying to learn and he was so slow at it. Culture shock, she told herself. He’s a Lannister. I have to be patient.

She was still holding the glass. Little spots of hard water decorated the inside. Because Jaime hadn’t dried it off. Because he didn’t know what to do.

Meaning to put it back into the sink to wash again, she smashed it on the counter instead. The edge cut her fingers across, and the skin gaped open and bled onto the floor, but all she did was watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -“Your hand is on the table” is maybe my favorite line ever  
-don’t give someone sleeping pills if they’re high  
-Myrcella giving Jaime penguin-related objects is my modern headcanon and you can’t take it from me  
-i love Myrcella and wish her all the best. i know things aren’t looking so hot for her right now but if GRRM kills her off i shall be very put out


	33. xxxiii: hallway (canon era)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little smut before the battle with the dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 12 December 2019.

She knew what she was doing when she sat down and had one drink and another, and she knew why Jaime Lannister got up and followed her after the fourth one. 

They didn’t need to talk about where she was going. They didn’t need to check in when he pushed her against a wall and fumbled at her trousers, when she tugged up his shirt, when he slipped his hand inside her and she opened wider, hungry for it.

When he pushed into her body she whimpered and bit down deep in the meat of his shoulder and Jaime hesitated; but that was it, she didn’t complain again, wouldn’t complain, and he finished hard.

Her legs were shaking. She pulled up her trousers and buttoned them, avoiding his eyes.

Too bad she couldn’t close off her ears, too. “You should have told me.”

Told you what, she tried to say, and It’s none of your goddamn business. What came out was “I don’t need your pity.”

“Pity!” he said. Then: “There’s no fucking time right now to talk, and I know you did that deliberately. But if we live through this battle, I’m going to find you.”

“I’m not afraid of you.” Spoken around the heart in her throat, the swollen honesty of her mouth.

Jaime laughed. “Keep telling yourself that.”

They lived.

He knocked on the door so politely she thought it was Sansa and didn’t have time to prepare herself before he was inside the room, pulling her close against his body and so fast that it was all she could do to shut the door again, stagger with him to the bed, rolling Jaime on his back while he sighed in relief, sliding his hand down her body and on to her ass, saying her name. 

“Jaime,” she said, and “please”: so he did.

When he came, she fisted her hands in his hair and swore aloud.

“Don’t make me go,” he said a hundred years later, when dawn crept across the snowy fields and they finally were able to see, finally had to see each other’s faces.

He was right: she wanted him gone. “I only needed you for one thing,” she said. Her voice was rasping in her throat. 

One thing had turned out to be several things, and several times, with hand and mouth and teeth as well as cunt and cock.

“You should have warned me you were a maid. I’d have been gentle.” His voice was gentle. Soft. He tucked a thick lock of hair behind her ear.

“I don’t need  _gentle_ .”

“So you won’t accept it either?” This was more like. Flat anger in his face, his tone, the hand fisted at his side. “Are you still afraid of me?”

“Say it again, Lannister. I’ll show you how much I fear you with a sword in your belly.”

“You could have had any man in the army, ser Brienne, if you had asked. But you wanted me between your legs.” He slipped his hand there and she clamped tight her thighs, trapping him from moving deeper — and from leaving her alone. “You wanted my mouth.” He kissed her breast.

Her legs fell apart and he continued up inside them, languid and confident.

Impossible to think when he looked at her like this. She said: “I was drinking that night.”

“For an excuse,” he said. “You needed one.”

She looked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as ever, i am cleaning out the Notes on my phone.


	34. xxxiv: roommates, 2 (modern era)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She googled Jaime that night. The only links were oblique references to Tywin Lannister’s bad boy eldest son, and some minor note about his extended stint in rehab the year before.
> 
> Rehab — maybe. But she doubted it. Those places didn’t usually fit you with an ankle monitor.
> 
> (part 2 of “brienne and cersei are college roommates” — see chapter 11 for part 1.)
> 
> (see Chapter 11 for part 1.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 20 January 2020.

She played rugby in the rain that weekend, and when she came into the room for her shower things, sloppy with mud, shirt sticking to her skin, — Jaime was there.

As was Cersei.

Brienne stood a moment. Stupid, stupid, she was _stupid_. She hadn’t expected them to be here, she’s thought they would be out — Cersei called it a _date_, she said _Jaime and I have a date tonight _and she actually simpered —

“You’re dripping,” said Cersei, at the same moment Jaime said

“You’re bleeding.”

“It’s fine,” Brienne said to Jaime. “It’s nothing.”

“She’s a big girl. She can handle it,” said Cersei: and returned her attention, eyes, hands, and mouth to her boyfriend. 

Brienne went to the showers, reminding herself there was absolutely no reason to be envious of her roommate.

... Except the obvious: that  Cersei was the most beautiful woman in the college, possibly the world. She was blonde and leggy and her eyes were a clear bold green.

Brienne was fucking sick of the thought of her. 

And yet:

“I’m in bed. Sleeping,” said Jaime, who was very definitely in bed and had very definitely not been sleeping. He readjusted the phone on his ear, listening. “Yeah, but Cers—”

Brienne rolled her eyes.

“I’ve got class in a while. I’ll see you tonight.”

Brienne started looking for her clothes.

“It’s only five hours from now. Look, I gotta — I’m gonna go. I have to go. You know that. I’m going to hang up.”

He did not, of course, hang up. Brienne wiggled into her underpants.

“Cersei,” he said. “Cersei ... Yes.” Pause. “Tonight. Yes.” Pause. “Love you too.” And he disconnected the call.

“Class, huh?”

Jaime snorted. “Miss Moralism. Like you’re going to tell her where I am.”

“I’m not the one  dating her.”

“You’re still _lying_ to her.”

“I never promised ...” She stopped, hearing herself. Hating herself.

He slid a hand up her shirt. “I want you again.”

“You just had me.”

”I’m greedy,” he said.

And so was Brienne . She hadn’t known that before him. She’d thought she was a good girl, she was rational. _S_ _low-witted_ people said, _dumb as she is ugly,_ but Brienne liked to be careful.

Not anymore.

She had gone to the campus clinic, face turning red even before the doctor had her undress. _Are you currently sexually active, or do you plan to be in the future?_ said the questionnaire.

_Yes_, wrote Brienne, thinking of how he’d pushed down her jeans with one hand, how her nails dug into his ass, pulling him closer — harder — _Yes, Jaime._

Afterwards he’d rolled off her and left her staring at the ceiling.

_I don’t suppose you smoke,_ he said into the silence.

_You’re not going to tell Cersei, are you?_ she said.

He looked at her and didn’t reply.

_Good_, said Brienne, who did not smoke, who wanted a cigarette almost as much as she’d wanted him thirty minutes before._ There’s no need to upset her over a ... mistake._

_You’re lying to yourself, _said Jaime, _if you think this is the last time._


	35. xxxv: i hate you, but ... (modern)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne has hated Jaime Lannister since the day they met — when he knocked over her block tower and refused to apologize. Okay, fine, that was all the way back in kindergarten, but the girl holds a grudge ... until they run into each other in the grocery store, the autumn after graduating high school.
> 
> For “run into each other at the grocery store”, please read “get into a fight outside the football stadium during Homecoming, accidentally kiss, and end up fucking in her car.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written March 22, 2020.

Brienne has lowkey hated Jaime Lannister for thirteen years, so fucking him in the backseat of her car comes as somewhat of a surprise.

More astonishing is how good it is.

Oh, it’s not _great_ — the angle is awkward, and the hard metal lapbelt jams into her hip with every thrust, and all she can think is that when her father sold her this car he _definitely_ did not anticipate it being used for a quick, furious fuck in a parking lot.

Also she really doesn’t want to think of her father right now.

“Lannister,” she hisses. “Hurry it up.” Her voice is reassuringly steady.

“Fuck you,” he mumbles into her neck, but he also reaches down between her legs where she’s stretched and burning and hot, where he’s buried; he touches her — gods, he just lets his finger rest there and the stars explode and she’s vaguely aware of clawing at him, making him swear and pull out just in time for him to jerk himself off and finish on the vinyl, in thick streaks.

Disgusting.

Disentangling isn’t sexy. It never is. And there’s suddenly negative room in the car — she’s trying to pull her jeans back on, rummaging in the glove box for tissues, trying to smooth her hair into something less embarrassing.

Jaime is staring at her. “Sorry,” he says.

“For what? Clean that mess up.” She tosses him the tissues.

He does so, clumsy with his left hand but careful about it — he gets in the little grooves and channels of the seat, spending so much time that she’s starting to think he’s avoiding looking her in the face.

If he wants to pretend like it didn’t happen, like he didn’t embarrass himself by being with anyone as ugly as she is ... well. That works for Brienne. 

She takes the chance to look at his hand — his right hand — which she hasn’t done yet, not having spent any real time with him since the accident. It doesn’t look as bad as people ...

“Your shirt’s backwards,” he says, calm; he’s perfectly aware of where she was looking. “Might want to fix that before someone sees it. Anyway, do you want to leave first, or should I?”

“I’ll go,” says Brienne.

“You were out late,” says Tyrion; he’s eating cereal and checking stock prices, and it’s nearly three in the morning.

Jaime tosses his keys on a table and heads towards the back of the apartment. “I didn’t realize anyone would care.”

“It’s an observation, not a criticism.”

“I’m taking a shower,” says Jaime, curt.

Tyrion calls: “What’s her name?”

Jaime turns the water on.

“You were out late,” says Brienne’s father the next morning. He’s eating eggs and reading the newspaper.

“Sorry about that,” she says. “I met up with some friends.” She drops a kiss on his cheek. “I’ll call next time, okay?”

“I worry about you.”

“I know.”

There is _no reason_ (Jaime tells himself) to be thinking of Brienne of bloody Tarth when he’s got his hands — hand — around his cock. Think of porn stars, think of pretty loosemouthed Pia, think of goddamn Addam, even think of Cersei if you need to do it. _Anyone_ should be in his wankbank before Brienne — she's so thick and stolid, her lips too big and her legs too long, her hips rising up to meet his as he pushed inside her body and the sound she’d made, pulling him closer and deeper —

Later on he’ll blame the orgasm for this moment of stupidity — but right now, in the sleepy afterglow, texting Brienne to set up another date seems completely reasonable.

_ How did you get this number? _

_ tyrion _

_ How did he get it? _

_ hes tyrion _

Brienne doesn’t reply for several minutes, staring down at the phone in her hand instead, thinking of all the things she’d like to do to him and in what order. She finally sends _I’m not your hookup._

_y not?_ says Jaime.

Gods help her, the question mark does it. _Fine. Tonight — same place — 10pm?_

_ 9,_ he sends.

_Don’t push your luck,_ she tells him — and flops back on her bed, grateful he can’t see how she’s smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more from the Notes folder.  
updates will continue until i run out of half-formed ideas ... hopefully never again using the term "wankbank"


	36. xxxvi: definitely not dating (modern)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You should break up with him.”  
“Who?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 21 February 2020.

“You should break up with him.”

“Who?”

Selwyn levels a stare over his newspaper.

“We’re not dating,” says Brienne. Mumbles it, because that flat statement is so inadequate it might as well be a lie.

“Honey, it doesn’t matter what you call it. You’re in a relationship with someone who is using you.”

Brienne maintains eye contact with her breakfast — overnight oats, with some figs and nuts tossed in. It’s a good breakfast. It won’t judge her.

When her father shows no signs of dropping the silence, she says: “He isn’t like that.”

“Are you happy being with him?”

“We aren’t dating.”

“Brienne.”

“I’m happy,” she says. “And I’ll be out tonight til late.” She’s eating fast to get out of this conversation. Two more bites, then one: finished. She carries her bowl to the sink and fills it with water and leans against the counter, waiting for whatever else he’s going to say.

“Going out with Jaime again?”

“Yes. You don’t need to wait up.”

“I will, though.”

“I know.” She goes to him. Kisses him goodbye. “I’ll be fine.”

“You should ask yourself sometime why you’re happy with someone like that,” says her father: and then he lets her go.

The reason was simple. 

She was in love with him.

Everyone knew it — every single member of the Lannister household, who seemed to extend endlessly, branches on branches of cousins who met her and visibly restrained a laugh, while saying “Oh yes, I’ve heard so much about you.”

Tywin was distantly polite, while Tyrion mocked her looks and her heritage and her education and her unladylike interests — deriding her openly, and to her face.

Brienne tried to hate him and could not; the cruelty seemed somehow directed at Jaime. Because he was aware of how she felt? or because he was oblivious? She couldn’t tell — and eventually she stopped trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a lot of Opinions about Jaime’s relationship with Brienne, and most of them are not flattering to Lannister


	37. xxxvii: prostitution au (modern)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> once upon a time in Westeros, there was a very, very pretty young man who found he had a certain marketable skill ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 09 january 2020.

“Mmm. We should have done this in high school.” She stretched out on his bed — embarrassingly large, wide, firm. Someone might accuse him of overcompensating.

That would be someone who hadn’t fucked on linen sheets. Gods, it was decadent. She sighed. 

He laughed at her, soft. “Comfortable, Miss Tarth?”

“Very, Mister Lannister.”

“Oh gods,” he said. “Don’t call me that! I’m not  that much older than you.”

“Only a year. You were a senior ...” But she had skipped a grade — that made it two years — and Jaime ...

“I was held back,” he said. “I’m older than you think, at any rate.”

“That isn’t so unusal. Lots of kids —“

“Not _Lannisters_. Not Tywin’s son. I only graduated because he greased palms to make it happen. I might be stupid but I know that much.”

“You aren’t stupid.”

“He wanted to spare himself the embarrassment. It wasn’t to protect me. He never cared about —“ He stopped.

Brienne waited.

“I’ve found something I’m good at, anyway,” he said. “Come here and let me show you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part 1/3.  
breaking them up because they don’t go together neatly.


	38. xxxviii: (part 2)

“Why would you do this, Jaime? You don’t need the money, you must have —“

“My trust fund isn’t as large as you seem to think.”

“Oh, cry me a fucking river. Why don’t you get a real job? You have skills.”

“Yes,” he said, terse. “And I’m using them. I have a job, Brienne. A real job, using my real skills.”

She laughed. “Congratulations. You’re good at sex.”

He looked carved from stone. “You think this isn’t _work?_ I fuck people I don’t want to fuck. I do things I don’t enjoy. Any disgusting thing their lover refuses to do, anything they’re too embarrassed to want, I’ll do. Anyone too old, too ugly, to get laid —“

“Like me?” she said. Her voice shook. “Is this work for you, Jaime?”

“_You’re_ the one who came here,” he said. “You’re the one who pays for it. _You_ think that you’re too ugly for me to want you.”

She stuttered — she didn’t even know what she would have been saying, if she could have spoken. She didn’t know what she could say to him, a statue of a god, looking at her with that cold fury.

She took her bag and left, slamming the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellava week, innit? wow.


	39. xxxix: three of three

Jaime opened on the first knock, and blinked in surprise. She wasn’t what he expected.

“I’m sorry,” she said, before he could speak.

“Brienne.”

“I’m not here to — I just wanted to say that much. To apologize. And I understand if you don’t want to see me again.”

He opened his mouth and shut it again, biting on his bottom lip. 

Anyone would want to bite that lip. She dragged her gaze back up to his eyes with some difficulty. “I don’t want to be someone you fuck for money.”

“ Brienne ,” he said.

“That is — I don’t need to — to date you.” Gods, she was blushing. “I’ll pay. It isn’t — I don’t mind. But I don’t want you to hate it.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she heard what she hadn’t heard when she was practicing this speech: I want you to whore for me and enjoy it, too. She flinched. “I mean —“

“Brienne,” he said. “Listen. I can’t talk toyou right now. I’m busy today.”

Of course not. “I’m sorry. I should have ...”

His mouth twisted. “You’re going to make me say it? I have a client coming soon. That means you have to leave.”


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a long discussion about marriage.

“Why won’t you marry me?”

Brienne is replacing the blunt practice swords in their stand, and she takes her time about it. “Kingsguard can’t marry,”

she says, finally.

“Fortunately for you, I’ve been disbarred.”

“They serve for life.”

“Oh, do they? I must have fallen asleep during that part in the vow ceremony — Brienne!”

“This soup is good.”

She nods. “The bread, too. Who is it in the kitchens now? Hot Cakes?”

“Hot Pie,” says Jaime, mouth full. “Terrible name, excellent cook. Is that supposed to even things out, do you think?”

“Not everyone is so adroit with names as ... as some knights I could mention.” She rolls her eyes, scorning. “What moved you to name a horse Honor, I’ve never understood —“

“That was Peck’s idea.”

“You let it stand.”

“I thought it was funny.”

“You have a terrible sense of humor,” says Brienne. 

She is smiling a little. His heart turns over in his chest. “Better that than none at all,” he manages to say. “Wench. Am I hideous, since my maiming?”

“You’re acceptable.”

“Am I foolish?”

She hesitates. “No more than usual.”

“Why won’t you wed me?”

She goes back to her soup, looking absolutely bored. “Are you planning to badger me until I come up with a response that pleases you?”

“Of course,” says Jaime. He puts more soup in his mouth so he won’t say what he wants to say about pleasure and Brienne, swallows, and says: “Are you going to eat that slice?”

The wench passes it over, and again she’s smiling.

“Your father would be happy.”

“Are you really bringing this up right now?”

Brienne is sleepy, Jaime is smug, and both of them are bare under the furs.

He smirks at her just a little. “This time you cannot stride away from me with those long, lovely legs. Do you truly think it would displease Lord Selwyn?”

“My father is a hundred hundred miles away, and perhaps he is dead ... And if he lives, he will a second heir. Not a Lannister who will be always putting his own lands and castles before ours.“

“You know I would not do that. Even if I were to inherit, I would not.”

“For Kings Landing, Jaime? For Casterly Rock? It were a choice to defend them or Tarth, you would not think it worth the time it took to ask the quesrion.”

He shifts back, so he can look at her. “For Casterly, no. I would not. It is a heap of stones and memory, and it does not need defending. For Kings Landing ... would you truly balance a million lives against ten thousand?”

She is quiet. “This is why I should never be a queen. Because that calculation is not only numbers, and it must be.”

“And I will never be king, thank the gods, despite the dreadful machinations of my dreadful father. He was forced to make do with Cersei, and considered himself quite put-upon. But Cersei thought that was backwards. She often said she should have been born in my place — that she would have made a better man. She was right.”

“No.”

“She was as good as any of us lads, you know, when we were small. Before they had her tied down with embroidery silks and corset-laces.”

“She was cruel, and devious, and edging towards mad.”

“As I would have been in her place, I think. She always said we were the same.”

“No.” She shifts to look him in the face. “She had terrible things happen and she tried to make others suffer along with her. But your worst moments are your best ones, Jaime. With Aerys —“

“He was mad.”

“And he trusted you, and you did a horrible thing, a selfless thing, that you neither hid nor shrank from.”

He doesn’t reply.

“In the Riverlands? They took your hand and you still helped me, knowing there was no reward in it.”

“You are right,” says Jaime, after a moment. “I should not have brought this up.” And he shuts his eyes. 

Jaime adds another shovel of snow to the cart — they are cleaning out the walkways and the practice-yard — and says: “What if there is a child?”

Brienne wipes sweat from her face. It is heavy work, this clearing. “I thought we were finished this talk.”

“You know me better than that. Answer the question, wench.”

“There will be no child. I drink moon-tea, and you, ... ah ...”

He laughs at her embarrassment. “I spend outside your body, yes.” Usually. “Neither of those things are a guarantee.”

“Probably I am not able to bear children.”

“Is this some comment about your mannishness? You are woman enough.”

She makes a face at him, Jaime throws a snowball at her, and the conversation is finished for that day.

“If Tywin were alive”, she says, when muddy patches of ground show through the white, and the first green spears of crocus are pushing upwards to the sky, “if he were living, would you want us to wed?”

“Why should that change anything?”

“You know it would.”

He takes his time about answering. “I was not inclined to please my father.”

She tilts her head. Her hair is long, now, falling past her chin. “He would  want you to marry me?”

“Not you, specifically. I doubt he ever thought of Tarth once he was done forcing me to memorize its banners and port city. Certainly I never heard him mention the lord’s leggy daughter, he was always in favor of more likely applicants — as delightful as you undoubtedly were,” he adds hastily, to soften the look in her eyes when anyone insults anything about her homeland. “But Tywin would have loved the idea of your little island swallowed up in a single big gulp of a lion’s mouth. Family and legacy were his ruling principles.”

Brienne tells him to hold still, and adjusts one of the straps around the heavy padding he wears for added weight and protection during their spar. She is at her best like this, all unselfconscious of her flaws, and Jaime watches her.

“If there were a child,” she says, “you would want it to be a Lannnister.”

He cannot argue this. “I am tired of bastards,” he says. “Tired of babies I cannot hold, tired ... Would you really prefer that he be raised a Storm?”

“He? Who is this he?”

“Our son.”

“Why wouldn’t our child be a daughter?”

“Why would it be?” says Jaime, and kisses her.

Brienne disarms Jaime, trips him with a foot to the back of his knee, and stands over him, silently looming.

“You can’t help up a hopeless cripple? Oh, you are a heartless wench.”

“If I married you,” she says, “I would not give up fighting.”

He squints at her. “Has that been on your mind all this time? Do you know me so little?”

“Men change. You will think you own me.” Her voice is unsure.

“Are you going to give me a hand?”

“You already have one of your own,” she says, absently: and Jaime laughs aloud. 

“Wench,” he says.

“I don’t want to talk about this. I want to sleep.”

“Then I’ll talk. I don’t want to make you stop working to please yourself, or to steal your island, or make you bear children, or control who you see and what you think.”

She’s silent, looking at him.

“So, we won’t marry. There’s no need to do it, really. I’m sure your father will be disappointed in me, but that’s no issue, I’m well-accustomed to disappointing fathers —“

“Jaime?”

“Yes.”

“Sleep.”

So he does: but Brienene stays awake. Tomorrow, she thinks. She’ll give in tomorrow.


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brienne has a problem; jaime offers a solution

They were in Jaime’s apartment, and Brienne was on her third drink.

It was possible that Jaime had been overgenerous with the alcohol. It was possible that Brienne wanted to get drunk, because “That absolute dick, Hyle Hunt—“

Jaime drank from his own glass, to forestall whatever remark he might have made. He put down the glass slow, practicing a mindfulness technique his therapist went on about. Inhale to a count of three ...

“—put his hand down my pants.”

Jaime had stopped listening to focus on his breathing; now listening again, he stopped breathing. “Beg pardon?”

Brienne moaned. “Don’t make me say it again.”

“I promise I’ll pay attention this time.”

“I said that I can’t believe I let him put his stupid hairy hand down my pants.”

Exhale to a count of seven. “Did you sleep with him?”

Brienne didn’t reply.

He nudged her with his foot. “Come on. Talk. Or do you want another rum and coke?”

“Yes,” she said. “And no.”

His heart contracted. “No, to which one?”

She covered her face and spoke between her fingers. “No, I did not quite sleep with him.”

“So Hyle put his hand—“

“And I did, too.” Brienne picked at her jeans. She’d let down the hem— he saw the darker line where the dye set unevenly into the original crease — and even so, they weren’t long enough. She said, “It was ugly.”

Thank every one of the gods that Hyle Hunt was not Brienne’s type. Except ... He fiddled with the rim of his glass. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” firmly.

“Is — is that ... your opinion of men in general?”

And Brienne stared a moment — looked ready to punch someone in the face — a Jaime would do nicely — and decided to laugh, instead. “I’m straight, moron.”

“Oh. Well.”

“I’m not ... it’s not all men, it’s only all the men who like me enough to fuck me.”

“That — that isn’t ...”

“I get it. I’m too tall and I look like _this_, and I eat food instead of pretending I have no appetite, and when someone is wrong I tell them, and —“

“Some men like you enough.”

“What?”

“I like you,” said Jaime. “I like you a lot.”

She rolled her eyes. “Thanks.”

“I’ll sleep with you.”

Brienne was blushing now; he saw it. He looked away.

She said “I don’t want pity. Don’t be like that.”

“It wouldn’t be pity,” he said, before he could stop himself, before he could look at her expression instead of the table, the glasses, the space between their hands. “I want to do it. I want you.”

She was staring at him, he felt it and he had to look up. Yes: her eyes were blue and clear and focused on him, and she was frowning. Disbelief, he thought. Unsurety.

He stretched out his hand on the table, fingers splayed and reaching out. “Please,” he said. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the rumors that i am writing again have been greatly exaggerated.


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you jealous?”  
“No.” She forced a laugh. “Fuck no.”  
“You are.”  
“I’m not, alright? It’s only ... it’s just that you deserve better.”  
“Someone like you, I guess.”  
“Gods, no. I don’t want you.”  
“Good,” said Jaime. “Don’t start.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 06 October 2019.

Jaime taught her to smoke, there in her backyard. They didn’t have many years between them but it was enough then; she was still a kid and he was the now-in-school-now-expelled-again oldest Lannister kid, angry and restless and sharp.

Hey. Buy me a pack? Pia is in there today and she knows I’m underage. I’ve got cash.

You don’t want to start that shit, he told her.

Yes, she said. I do. 

He’d raised his head at that and looked at her, really looked, for maybe the first  time. Go home, kid. Isn’t anyone looking after you?

My father’s dying, my mother’s run off, and I’m fucking _here_. And remind me why it’s any of your business what I do.

He looked sideways at her. Aren’t you dating that douche who works in the chicken factory? Smells like shit all the time.

Nowhere else to work. Look, are you gonna —

Yeah, he said. I’m gonna.  And he disappeared inside, coming back out a moment later, waving the package at her. C’mon.

You owe me change.

Nope, not slowing his stride. I don’t.

She squawked. I gave you a twenty!

Finder’s fee. Are you coming or not?

Twenty fucking dollars. She climbed in his truck — it was surprisingly neat — and decided to leave the door unlocked. She trusted him that far. Where are we going?

I’m taking you home, he said, short.

She kept her hand on the handle the whole way: but Jaime never even looked in her direction.

He gave her a lighter and told her how to inhale and didn’t laugh when she choked.  It gets easier.

Why are you here? she said, when it was easier. What are _you_ avoiding?

Family.

Brienne was running out of family. She scratched her ankle with the toe of her shoe. My dad’s dying. 

Yeah, said Jaime. You said that.

After a minute, he said: When he dies, remember it’s not your fault. It’s just a shitty thing that happened. You didn’t do it and you couldn’t stop it. It’s isn’t ... it just happens. 

She nodded. She knew that.

It happened, far more slowly than either of them wanted, far quicker than she could bear. He said, gasping around the words: “Find some nice boy.”

Yes, dad.

“Not here. Don’t stay here.”

No, she told him. I’ll leave.

But she stayed. Where could she go?

The county clerk looked the other way and signed the paperwork that let Brienne be “fostered” by the Starks. They officially or unofficially fostered half the kids in the state, seemed like: what was one more teenager?

Brienne didn’t even need a place to stay. She had a roof, a stove, a trailer. She had her father’s truck to drive and exams to study for.

And there was Jaime on the other end of the line every time she reached out, the phone receiver a hard plastic prosthesis to hold onto, a replacement for his hand.

She expected he would hurt her. Come in late one nighttime and — but no, that wasn’t his way. Maybe he’d grab at her in the car. Make a joke that wasn’t a joke about what she owed him.

Or he would do something simpler, easier. He’d simply stop caring.

But none of those things happened. Something flared up in his eyes when she started to date Hyle, and she thought — Now, he’ll leave —

That light burned hot for a week when he came to her house late at night with a split lip and swollen knuckles, smelling of gunpowder and whiskey, the night Cersei’s boyfriend died. “Brienne?” he said, and “I’m so glad you’re awake. I didn’t know where else to go.”

He showered and dressed in her clothes and fell asleep in her bed, and Brienne slept in the bed next to him for no other reason but that she wanted to do it. She wanted to trust him, and he was so easy to trust. 

Gradually she forgot to expect him to hurt her: and then, of course, he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sort of a second chapter to The Night’s First Star, except ... not?
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/20910689


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> birthdays are had, secrets are revealed. brienne is surprisingly resistant to going on a date. 
> 
> normal things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 21 June 2020.

Uncle Jaime wasn’t Galadon’s real uncle, of course. _Obviously_. Jaime looked nothing like Mother — that was one — and they didn’t have the same last name, — twon— and once he had come into the kitchen and seen Jaime’s hand holding Mother’s, which was a very normal and common thing to do, but this was different in some way; this was like a secret.

He came by for supper every week though,just like grandpa did. And he stayed late to help Mother wash the dishes, which meant he stacked them in the dish rack to dry and swore he would finish them later. When Mother complained about his laziness, he shook his head at her: “You expect a man with one hand to hold a dishtowel and a plate, and not drop either? You’re a cruel woman, Brienne.”

She didn’t argue anymore about it, Gal noticed — but he also noticed that Jaime put the dishes away before he left.

And Jaime didn’t always leave the same night he showed up. Sometimes they stayed up late and talked, sitting on the steps outside while Gal slept, the low sound of their voices coming up to tangle in his dreams. He liked the days Jaime came, blood relative or not; his mother always seemed to move easier those days, smile brighter.

And then Gal turned ten.

His mother — normally so kind — was tense and short-spoken. Grandfather came and they played a little, and that was good.

And then uncle Jaime came. And everything got worse.

He greeted Galadon with a hug and a smile and made a joke, tossed off a salute for Selwyn, who did not look amused, and said to Gal: “Where is your mother?”

“Lannister,” said Selwyn. “You wouldn’t be thinking of upsetting her, would you?”

Jaime put his hand in his pocket, looking warm. “How could you think such a thing of me?”

“She’s in the kitchen,” Gal told him. “She’s still baking. I told her to stop.”

“People get emotional,” said Jaime, “around their son’s birthday.” 

He went into the house. 

He did not shut the door.

Within a few minutes, they heard Brienne yell; and then they heard the noise of breaking glass.

Uncle Jaime came running out, skidding a little. “Gal,” he said, breathless. “I’ve got some news for you.”

“Don’t you goddamn well dare,” said Mother, coming up on his heels.

“Make me stop,” said Jaime.

She huff’d. “We can talk about this like civilized people. You don’t always need to go to extremes, Jaime. Why are you so dramatic?”

“Don’t distract me with philosophy. You know I want — you know what I want.”

“If you do this, you won’t get it.”

He shook his head. “When Gal knows, he’ll —“

“That is blackmail.”

“If you like,” said Jaime.

“When I know what?”

“Am I going to have to teach you a lesson?” said Selwyn, to Jaime.

“When I know what?”

“Brienne has a longer reach and a stronger arm.”

“Don’t ruin things with your infernal selfishness,” said Brienne. “Be reasonable. We can work something out.”

“One dinner out together doesn’t seem so much to ask.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“You don’t trust yourself,” said Jaime.

And Gal saw his mother flinch.

That was too much to bear, on any day but especially on his birthday. He yelled. “What don’t I know? What have you been keeping from me?”

And then he knew; he saw it on their faces.

Brienne made a sound like she was choking; she went into the house. Her father followed. 

And Gal’s father stood there in front of him. He stuffed his hand into his pocket, as he often did when he was uncomfortable. “Happy birthday,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming to an end of my copious file of half-written fics. 
> 
> (strums guitar; sings Tim McGraw) The ending of an era, the turning of the page. Maybe now I’ve conquered all my adolescent fears?


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> at Pennytree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 26 august 2020.

Pennytree.

Brienne has been weeping all evening now, off and on like a long slow rain starts and ends and starts again, and Jaime long since gave up trying to speak words of comfort or reassurance. Or maybe the wench has been through enough that he cannot tell her lies anymore.

In the middle of the night she starts again — smothering it in her hands this time because she thinks him asleep. Or perhaps she thinks him dead.

He very nearly was. He raises a hand to rub at his eye. The wrong hand. He lowers it again. “Lady Brienne?”

A choking sob.

“Don’t cry so. Hunt and the boy ...” Gods, he cannot even remember the child’s name. He’s seen too many boys like that, swole-tongued and swinging. None of them were old enough to have done anything to deserve it, he thinks: but then he thinks of Joffrey, and. Well.

Beside him, Brienne shakes. Not with cold.

Jaime shifts until he’s sitting upright, against the tree. “I had wondered if you ever wept.”

No response.

“It’s quite maidenly of you.”

She says something into her hands.

”My sister cried often, as a child. Tears of rage mostly, I think. A little while older and she saw that crying only made things worse for her, and then she never did it again.” Not in public, anyway; not where anyone could see. “I never thought to see you do it. Even with the Mummers, you never wept.” He had, often.

She speaks, too rasping to understand.

”Say it again.”

Hoarsely: “I thought they’d cut him down. Podrick. Hyle, too. I thought, if I ...

”No,” says Jaime, soft. “That sort of people... It isn’t your fault.”

She drags a hand across her nose. “It is, though. If I had given in sooner, if I hadn’t, hadn’t argued. Since it happened anyway. I could have stopped it. Doesn’t that make it my fault? L-Lord Tarly said that I need a har — he said that I should go home. A man at the Quiet Isle said the same.”

“Don’t weep like this. They’re dead. They can’t hear it. It won’t help them.”

“They are right. I should go home,” she says: and again she bursts into tears.

It’s easy to let her draw close against his side; and she fits well there, warm. It’s easy to let his arm settle around her. It is easy to lean over and put his mouth against hers, 

— to feel her jolt of shock and her scramble away, her long form a white tower in the darkness. “What are you doing?”

”Nothing.”

She doesn’t move. “Ser.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Jaime, we cannot travel like this if you—”

“I will not abuse you,” he says: and now his voice sounds like hers. Rough. Rasping. As though he’s been strung up and left to die. “I have not done so.” Except of course that he just did, and wants to do it again - that and more.

She settles on the ground nearby, and her eyes are still on him. The tears are dried up at least. “I’ll take first watch,” she says. “You rest.”

He shifts down again, head against a gnarled root, and shuts his eyes. “I meant nothing by it.” It’s easier to lie to her in the darkness.

“I know,” she says. Is that regret in her voice, or gratitude? Her throat is too swollen to give any real tone. She says again, more softly, “I know.”

and Jaime falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after a rereading of certain chapters in ASOIAF i can say with absolute sureity: poor Podrick!
> 
> Hyle Hunt offering to murder Jaime does make me laugh though. “I’LL DO IT”  
like he’s just been waiting for the chance to fight a crippled old man? how gallant a knight is our ser Hyle
> 
> i feel like i write Brienne crying an awful lot but lord the girl needs an emotional release she has been through A LOT this year (haven’t we all)


End file.
